
<\.^. 







v 



vasw °^ ^*\£ifr\ c *.^5it* o o +*.•£&% c°*.^S 



» ^ 






&■ **% -J 



'.• ^°* V 



b ^f.y .V^'V* V^V V^^'V" V* 






• 1 * 

. v, 






■w^ • • • • V * V^» " • * <V V^ * • • t « » 



5?^ 






IS : 






1 ^ 













s> .: 



>- V^ 






. v^v' %*^Pv vs^v v^sv v 






wr«* ^ ^ 










^ ^ »* p±* ^a ^ ♦wwvo % 



»■ •, 



*+4 






RECENT 



ARCH/EOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS 



IN GREECE, 



MAINLY THOSE OF THE 



AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES 



AT ATHENS. 



BY 



J. GENNADIUS, D.C.L 

M 



ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 



THE FORUM. 



NEW YORK. 1896-1898 



i. 



>n? 



^ 






CONTENTS. 



I. May, 1896. 

Importance of Archaeological Excavations. — Early explorers in Greece. 
Schliemann's work at Mycenae and Tiryns. 

II. August, 1896. 

The pre-Persian Akropolis. — Epidauros. — Eleusis. — Tanagra. — Olympia. 
Delos. — Pto'ion. 

III. November, 1896. 

Exploration of Delphi. — Hymns to Apollo. — Music of the Greeks. 

IV. January, 1897. 

The American School. — Assos. — Thorikos. — Sicyon. 

V. March, 1897. 

Ikaria.— Stamata. — Koukounari. — Anthedon. — Thisbe. 

VI. June, 1897. 
Plataia and Eretria. 

VII. November, 1897. 
The Argive Heraeum. 

VIII. January, 1898. 
Sparta. — Amyclae. — Phlius. — Corinth. 



The pbrum 



MAY, 1896 

The Political Situation E. L. GODKIN 257 

A Salutary Mandate to the National Conventions, WM. SALOMON 271 

THE CUBAN ttUESTION: 
Our Duty to Cuba Senator H. C. LODGE 278 

The Question of Cuban Belligerency, JOHN BASSETT MOORE 288 

Professor of Internationa/ Law, Columbia University, N. Y. 

PROBLEMS OF POVERTY AND PAUPERISM: 

Need of Better Homes for Wage-Earners, 

CLARE de GRAFFENRIED 301 

Special Agent of the U. S. Department of Labor 

The Cultivation of Vacant City Lots . . M. A. MIKKELSEN 313 
Modern Norwegian Literature— I, BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON 318 

The Unaided Solution of the Southern Race Problem, 

A. S. VAN de GRAAFF 330 

Pestalozzi and Herbart WILHELM REIN 346 

Professor of Pedagogy, University of Jena 

Modern Archaeology: Recent Excavations in Greece, 

J. GENNADIUS 361 

Ambassador from Greece to the Court of St James 

Is the Power of Christianity Waning?— No! . H. K. CARROLL 376 



NEW YORK 

THE FORUM PUBLISHING COMPANY 

LONDON 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 24 Bedford Street, Strand 

is. 6d a Copy tvoi. xxi., no. 3 ] i8s. a Year 

/ 



WRITERS IN THE MAY FORUM. 



Mr. E. L. Godkin {The Political Situation), born in 1831, began Iris journal- 
istic career in New York in 180:2, and in 1865 established " The Nation." In 1881 
he became editor also of the New York " Evening Post." 

Me. William Salomon (A Salutary Mandate to the National Conventions), 
born in Mobile, Alabama, October, 1852, is a member of the firm of Speyer & Co., 
New York, one of the leading international banking-houses of the United States. 

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge {Our Duty to Cuba), born in Boston, Mass., 
1850, was graduated from Harvard in 1871, and from the Law School in 1875. He 
was elected to the Fiftieth, Fifty-first, Fifty-second and Fifty -third Congresses. 
In 1893 he was elected to the United States Senate. 

Professor John Bassett Moore {Tlie Question of Cuban Belligerency), born 
in Delaware in 1860, was educated at the University of Virginia, and admitted to 
the bar in 1883. In 1885 he was appointed to a position in the Department of 
State, and later became Third Assistant Secretary of State. In 1891 he was elected 
professor of international law and diplomacy in Columbia College. 

Miss Clare de Graffenried {Need of Better Homes for Wage-Earners) was 
born and educated in Georgia. After teaching for a time in Washington, she was 
appointed special agent of the United States Department of Labor, in which 
capacity she has investigated social and economic conditions here and abroad. 

Mr. M. A. Mikkelsen {The Cultivation of Vacant City Lots) was born in Wis- 
consin in 1805. In 1892 he took the Ph.D. degree at the Johns Hopkins University, 
Ins special studies being history, political economy, and historical jurisprudence. 

Bjornstjerne Bjornson {Modem Norwegian Literature), poet and novelist, 
was born at Osterdalen, Norway, 1832, and was educated at the University of 
Christiania. In the earlier part of his career he was a successful journalist. His 
stories and novels of Norwegian peasant life, as well as his numerous and power- 
ful dramas — whose material has been taken from the sagas, from recent history, 
and from modern life, — have given him a high and enduring place in the litera- 
ture of his country, while they have also won him wide fame beyond it. 

Mr. A. S. van de Graaff {The Unaided Solution of the Southern Race Prob- 
lem), born at Gainesville, Alabama, in 1859, was graduated from Yale in 1881, 
and admitted to the Alabama bar in 1884. 

Dr. Wilhelm Rein {Pestalozzi and Herbart), was born in Eisenach in 1847. 
He studied pedagogy under Prof. Stoy, whom, in 1885, he succeeded in the chair 
of Pedagogy in the University of Jena. Dr. Rein is the leader of the Herbartian 
movement in education and an eminent authority on the science of pedagogy. 

Mr. J. Gennadius {Modem Archaeology : Recent Excavations in Greece) was 
born in Athens in 1853. After completing his studies there, he entered upon a 
diplomatic career, in which he has achieved signal success, serving his country in 
Constantinople, London, Vienna, The Hague, and Washington. 

Mr. II. K. Carroll {Is the Pouter of Christianity Waning ? — No !) was born 
at Dennisville, N. J., in 1847. His present article is based upon an extensive 
experience which he had as special agent for the compilation of church statistics 
in the last census! 

"GREAT WESTERN" champagne, manufactured by the Pleasant Valley Wine Company, at 
Rhcinis, N. Y., is the finest brand produced in this country, and there is more of it consumed than of any 
other domestic product. Try it. 

Ill Tempered Babies 

are not desirable in any home. Insufficient nourishment produces ill temper. 
Guard against fretful children by feeding nutritious and digestible food. The 
Gail Borden Eagle Brand Condensed Milk- is the most successful of all infant 

foods. 



When Baby was siek. we gave her Castoria. 
When she was a. Child, she cried i'ov Castoria. 

When she became Miss, she clung To Castoria. 
When she had Children, she gave them Castoria. 



MODERN" AECH^EOLOaY: KECENT EXCAVATIONS 

IN GKEECE. 

The historical importance and the artistic interest which attach to 
the origin of our civilization, namely, the social and political develop- 
ment of ancient Greek life, are so great and so absorbing that the 
literary records of that epoch, though unrivalled in perfection and 
beauty, are meagre in comparison with the subject itself. Hence the 
acquisition of any tangible and visible relic of classic times is a gain of 
the highest value to science. * The study of such remnants of antiquity 
as were already available was sufficient to urge scholars to search for 
more. The charm and the fascination of Greek works of art which 
escaped the devastations of war, religious fanaticism, or the inroads of 
barbarism, captivated even the ignorant and the uncultured ; and it is 
to this irresistible pleading of the mute but all-powerful creations of 
Greek genius that we owe the preservation of those masterpieces which 
survived through the Dark Ages and were bequeathed by the awakened 
consciousness of the Kenaissance to our later times. But even then they 
were prized more as objects of beauty, beyond the rivalry of contem- 
porary artists, and as best fitted for the decoration of palaces and 
pleasure resorts. Their scientific and educational value was understood 
by few, and that imperfectly. As for archaeology, it was perhaps 
owing to its first faltering steps, to its unscientific ways and often 
absurd conclusions, that it was exposed for a long time to the 
reproach of idle curiosity and pedantic trifling. 

Bernard de Montfaucon's " L'Antiquite Expliquee et Eepresentee 
en Figures " (1719-24), the labor of a true Benedictine, was an initial 
effort at a systematic review of antiquity. But Johann Joachim 
Winckelmann, who became a Catholic abbe, as it has been humor- 
ously said, that he might explore Borne the more freely, and would 
have turned Mussulman had he been allowed to excavate Olympia, 
was the founder of the science of archaeology. His " History of the 
Art of the Ancients" (1764) is a work which fixes a date in the 
annals of literature ; and his " Monumenti Antichi Inediti," published 
a year before his assassination (1768), gave promise of even greater 



A 



3G2 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

things. Two generations later another German savant, Otfried Miiller, 
was the first to coordinate and tabulate in his "Manual of the Archae- 
ology of Art " (1830) the results achieved by the new science up to 
that time. No doubt much was still unknown and seemed inexplic- 
able. But the sonorous phrases of the past century now gave place to 
proven facts ; abstract theories vanished before absolute demonstration. 
Archaeology was no longer to be derided as a puerile pastime with 
potsherds, nor as a vain search after the dead bones of an irreclaimable 
corpse. It was manifest that it laid open before us the every -day life, 
elucidated the actions, and initiated us into the vivifying inspirations of 
that epoch of humanity which approached nearest to the ideal perfec- 
tion. The necessity of research on the spot was as firmly established 
in its essential relation to archaeology as is anatomy in its essential re- 
lation to medicine ; the pickaxe and the shovel of the digger became 
as effective instruments in the advancement of the science as the pen 
and the paper of the scholar. 

This new departure, however, demanded not only scholarship and 
many-sided erudition, but great enterprise and abundance of material 
means. And to these varied requirements must be attributed the fact 
that the earlier explorations are due, not to Germans, who possessed in 
a high degree the former qualification, but to Frenchmen and more 
especially to Englishmen, who possessed the latter advantages. It 
must also be borne in mind that the land which offered the widest and 
most promising field for this work was, during the earlier part of the 
century, exclusively under Turkish rule, — inaccessible, insecure, bris- 
tling with as many obstacles and dangers as it offered temptations to 
the archaeologist It was only later that many of these disadvantages 
disappeared, when facilities of communication, the development of 
engineering appliances, and the superabundance of wealth gave a 
great impetus to archaeological enterprise. 

But that which most stimulates the ardor of the excavator, laboring 
as he generally must amid difficulties and discomforts of all kinds, is 
the romantic interest of his pursuit, — a feeling so fresh and exhilarat- 
ing as to throw into the shade the proverbial excitement of the gold- 
digger. No find of gold can outweigh the rapture of the explorer who 
brings old worlds into a new life. The sensation must be experienced 
to be understood : it is the fascination of a passionate love. Only a 
resurrection of the dead could surpass its transports. The soil which 
has been for ages the faithful custodian of an inheritance laid by in 
trust for the pious and worthy worker, yields to his persistent efforts 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 3G3 

the treasures it has sheltered ; it gradually reveals the secrets it has 
guarded so long ; it is made to speak in a way more persuasive than 
the most eloquent historian; and, from its inner darkness, it sheds 
more light upon the past than the sun itself can give. A successful 
excavator creates new chapters of history. He lends substance to 
what were deemed but myths, and brings into being personalities not 
even dreamed of before. He fills up the gaps in whole epochs in art, 
and elucidates, beyond contention, the meaning of authors which the 
combined erudition of the learned was not able satisfactorily to explain. 
The determination of ancient sites fixes events in history. Buildings, 
statues, and other works of art make clear the evolution of civilization. 

But especially inscriptions — those undying and unerring witnesses 
of truth — speak with a clear and resonant voice, supplying an abun- 
dant stream of invaluable information to every branch of history, — in 
art, in religion, in philology, — and supplementing the unrecorded 
wealth of an immortal language. Inscriptions are often the surest 
guides to the reconstruction of dilapidated monuments ; the sequence 
of the writing reveals the dimensions, the form, and the age of the ob- 
ject on which it runs. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of 
this one harvest from recent excavations. Within the last few years 
the earth at the foot of the Acropolis yielded the very stone from 
which Thucydides copied the words of a treaty he quotes ; the inscrip- 
tions found at Olympia come, after two thousand years, to bear witness 
to the fidelity with which Pausanias described what he had seen ; and 
the innumerable records unearthed at Epidauros and Delos bring us 
into as intimate intercourse with the every-day life of twenty-three 
centuries ago, as the papers treasured in English country-houses 
familiarize us with Queen Elizabeth's court or the doings of Crom- 
well's Eoundheads. 

The enumeration of these marvellous finds, however, should not 
mislead the reader into the supposition that, but for the hardships of 
the task, excavating is a simple matter, open to the first comer. Any 
one may dig for gold in a virgin field ; but the exploration of a site, 
hallowed by the memories of a great past, is a labor to be entered upon 
only after much study and preparation, with feelings of reverence and 
with a sense of its responsibility. Nothing is more fatal to its success 
than the charlatanism of ignorance and the unscrupulousness of super- 
ficiality. Not only must the explorer be forearmed with every scrap 
of information bearing, even remotely, upon the history and topography 
of the locality, but he must be endowed with that great virtue in 



364 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

science, — the habit of scepticism which leads to deeper inquiry. He 
must furthermore be trained to observe carefully what may at first 
sight appear immaterial, — as the layers of the soil, the disposition of a 
ruin, the directions in which fragments are strewn. He must even 
know how to handle the pickaxe, that he may direct his workmen and 
imbue them with reverence and care for every bit of stone or pottery 
unearthed. Much engineering skill and architectural knowledge are 
also called into play. Indeed the pursuit of excavating may be said to 
constitute now a special vocation, a distinct branch of scientific research. 

The sites in which excavating is carried on may be divided into 
three categories: (a) particular buildings, wholly or partly exposed 
to view, details or fragments of which are sought in the immediate 
neighborhood ; (b) sites whose localities are positively known, but 
are buried under successive accumulations of earth and rubbish; (c) 
sites of uncertain location, of which no visible trace exists above 
ground, but which it is sought to fix and bring to light. In each case 
the indications to be found in ancient authors, the evidence offered by 
the surrounding country, and the disposition of the ground itself must 
serve as initial guides. These indications, of course, often play an im- 
portant part in such researches ; one excavator may vainly labor within 
a stone's throw of the spot he is groping after, while another may 
immediately alight on a thread which may lead him to unsuspected 
treasures. The general course pursued, however, in the latter two of 
the above classes of sites, is to sink trial shafts in quest of some vestige 
— a building, a fragment, a tomb — which is then followed up just as a 
miner traces a vein of precious mineral. 

The presence of later constructions often serves to indicate an 
ancient site. In Greece, almost invariably, ancient shrines are marked 
by Byzantine churches ; and very remarkable, as an evidence of the 
unbroken continuity of the national tradition, is the unerring fidelity 
with which the characteristics of pagan deities have been transferred 
to corresponding Christian saints. The transition from paganism to 
Christianity was not a sharp severance between Hellenism and By- 
zantism. The Parthenon (the temple of the Maiden) was transformed 
into a church of the Holy Virgin. The Theseum was consecrated to 
the memory of St. George — the warrior saint who slew the dragon. 
Sanctuaries of Zeus are invariably marked by Christian shrines de- 
voted to the Saviour ; and temples of Poseidon were given over to St 
Nicholas, the patron of mariners. At Eleusis, on the ruins of the 
temple of Cora — the virgin daughter of Demeter, — a Byzantine church 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 365 

was found standing, dedicated to the Virgin; and so throughout all 
Greece and in many parts of Asia Minor. 

Often a mere accident has led to the most startling discoveries. 
The ploughshare of a peasant striking against the apex of the loftiest 
mountain of the Ceramicus brought to light that unequalled highway 
of tombs at Athens ; and the tilling of the fields around Tanagra was 
the beginning of the discovery of those marvellously beautiful terra-cotta 
statuettes, which revealed to us a hitherto unknown branch of ancient 
art, — and that in a part of Greece the least likely to be credited with 
artistic aptitude or inclination. On the other hand, a similar accident, 
giving the opportunity into evil hands, has caused irreparable loss to 
science by the ruthless destruction of objects whose real value was not 
understood by those into whose possession they came. Even worse is 
the trade in illicit excavating, its object being the export and sale of 
antiquities in contravention of the law. Such excavations are carried 
on by ignorant treasure-seekers in a way all the more destructive, as 
it is hurried and surreptitious. Unfortunately they are encouraged, 
not only by dealers, but by private collectors and even by museums. 

No part of the ancient world offers so rich a field for archaeological 
research as the lands inhabited by the Greek race. Wherever Greek 
life extended in ancient times, there it has left the most instructive and 
beautiful traces of its activity. The antiquities of the other races may 
be quaint, curious, or even conducive to a certain kind of knowledge ; 
but the remains of Greek genius alone serve now — as they did when 
still fresh from the masters' hands — as models of the highest ideals of 
art, as the richest sources of inspiration, enlightenment, and culture for 
the entire human race. It may be said without exaggeration that, 
especially within the limits of Greece proper, every acre of ground 
can be stirred into life by the tangible evidence of its former splendor 
and glory. Every rock speaks of some deed of valor; every hill 
records some sacred legend ; the rippling brooks reecho the love- 
stories of the gods ; and the whole earth of Greece enshrines the re- 
mains of heroes. No wonder that this diminutive country — the whole 
of which, as Macaulay said, one might cover with a pocket-handker- 
chief — should have attached to itself a larger share of antiquarian 
research than the rest of the world taken together. Let us then rapidly 
review what has been accomplished in the way of Greek archaeological 
exploration since the beginning of this century, so that we may enter 
the more intelligently upon an examination of the infinitely more im- 
portant work achieved during the last few years. 



36G MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

The monumental work of J. Stuart and K Revett on " The An- 
tiquities of Athens " (1762-1816) was continued through the Society of 
Dilettanti, first by the expedition of Chandler to Greece (1765), and 
then by a series of superb publications recording successive researches 
in Greek lands up to the present day ; the most memorable of which is 
perhaps Penrose's epoch-making discovery of the true principles of the 
architecture of the Parthenon. Two other Englishmen, W. M. Leake 
in his " Topography of Athens " (1821) and Ed. Dodwell in his 
"Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece" (1819) and 
"Views and Descriptions of Cyclopean and Pelasgic Remains" 
(1834), as well as Gell in several works of a like nature (1810-1819), 
contributed valuable information to the antiquities of the country.. 
Contemporaneously with the first of these English explorations, the 
Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, French ambassador to the Porte, under- 
took his memorable journey through Greece and Asia Minor, recording 
his researches in the sumptuous " Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece " 
(1782-1809). Like his immediate predecessors and contemporaries he 
carried away a considerable number of valuable antiquities, and through 
the agency of the French consul at Athens secured in 1787 a few 
fragments of the sculptures of the Parthenon, now in the Louvre. 

The rivalry then existing between England and France and the in- 
terest in Greek antiquity aroused in England by the Society of Dilet- 
tanti, led Lord Elgin, the British ambassador at Constantinople, to 
procure a firman (1801) authorizing him to remove " a few blocks of 
stone with inscriptions and figures." On the strength of this limited 
authority he proceeded to employ several hundred laborers, under 
an Italian painter absolutely ignorant of archaeology or architecture, 
in removing from the Parthenon, with irremediable damage to the 
structure itself, almost all the sculptures of the pediments, the me- 
topes, and the frieze, together with one of the caryatides and a large 
number of inscriptions and other pieces from the Acropolis. This 
act was severely stigmatized by Lord Byron and has continued to the 
present day a theme of controversy. On a report by Canova and Vis- 
conti as to the merits of what have come to be known as the " Elgin 
marbles," they were purchased in 1810 by the British Government 

Similar was the fate of the less celebrated Phigaleian marbles. 
The temple of Apollo at Bassae, in the Peloponnesus, was first dis- 
covered in 1765, and Chandler visited the site a year later. In 1811, 
however, two Englishmen, C. R. Cockerell and J. Foster, assisted by 
the Austrian consul at Athens, and Baron 0. M. von Stackelberg, a 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 367 

German (author of pictorial works on Greece), removed the twenty- 
three tablets, constituting the frieze of the temple, to Corfu, and sold 
them by auction to the British Government for $75,000. In the same 
year the English and German travelers secured from the island of 
^Egina the sculptures of the temple of Athena and sold Jdiem for the 
sum of nearly $20,000 to Ludwig, then Crown Prince of Bavaria. 
They are now the pride of the Glyptothek at Munich. Lord John 
Spencer Stanhope had already visited the plain of Olympia and pub- 
lished widely the result of his researches, when, after the battle of 
Navarino, Charles X of France despatched to the Peloponnesus (1829) 
a body of troops in aid of the Greeks. This expedition was accompa- 
nied by a scientific mission, whose published " Proceedings " (1833-40) 
form one of the most sumptuous and valuable works on Greece. The 
archaeological section of the mission carried on excavations on the site 
of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The exploration of the site con- 
tinued for about six weeks and remained then incomplete, but a con- 
siderable number of sculptures were removed to the Louvre in Paris. 

The liberation of Greece, with political emancipation, brought rid- 
dance from these cruel spoliations to which she was continually ex- 
posed, and which tore from her ruthlessly her loveliest inheritance. It 
reflects the highest credit upon the government of the kingdom, that, 
distracted and devastated as was the country after emerging from a 
savage war of eight years' duration, one of its earliest cares was the 
enactment of a law for the preservation of antiquities. Though inade- 
quate to present requirements, that measure has done much to preserve 
and safeguard what still remained to Greece of her glorious heritage. 
The consciousness of the duty devolving upon the nation by the very 
sacredness of that heritage found expression in the establishment, as 
early as 1837, of the Greek Archaeological Society. The "Journal" 
and the "Transactions" of the Society, extending over sixty years, 
offer an unparalleled record of most varied and fruitful labors in the 
richest field of archaeological research in the world. 

The political settlement of the country and the readiness of the 
Greeks themselves to explore its ancient remains attracted the atten- 
tion of European scholars to the advantage of seeking in Greece those 
opportunities which they had in view in frequenting Kome. With a 
better knowledge of the conditions of archaeological study, it had 
become evident that no effective pursuit of science was possible with- 
out some familiarity with the material side of ancient life and with the 
physical aspect of the localities. The necessity was felt of establishing 



368 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

permanent centres in the country itself, to which students might be 
sent, and from which explorations might be organized And, as the 
interest offered by ancient Greece to men of culture remained pre- 
eminent, Kome had to give place to Athens the moment that necessity 
was admitted. Athens then became the sanctum of archaeology. 

The French Government was the first to establish, in 1846, a School 
of Archaeology at Athens. It claims now among its alumni some of 
the most eminent French savants, and the record of French archaeo- 
logical work in Greece includes the memorable excavations at the foot 
of the Propylaea by Beule in 1853. The lead which German scholar- 
ship always maintained in regard to Greek archaeology, — evidenced 
by the Athenian excavations, as early as 1834-36, of Ludwig Koss, 
and by the more recent "Prussian Expedition" in 1862, — rendered 
the establishment of a German School at Athens dependent only upon 
political opportunities. These proved favorable on the rise of the 
empire, and the Archaeological Institute, founded in 1874, achieved at 
once great reputation by the excavations at Olympia. It flourishes now 
under Dr. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, its distinguished chief. The American 
School came third in 1882 and the British fourth in 1886 ; the latter 
being fortunate enough to have Mr. Penrose as its first director. Of 
the excellent work done by both I shall make mention hereafter. 

The concentrated efforts of these powerful and thoroughly organ- 
ized bodies, all full of enthusiasm and eager to win distinction, 
brought about a healthy competition, resulting in brilliant achieve- 
ments. It is not within the scope of this article to refer to the numer- 
ous and important excavations carried on beyond the limits of the 
kingdom of Greece. Much space would be needed to give even a brief 
account of the work of Sir Charles Newton at Halicarnassus, Cnidus, 
and Branchidae ; of Fellows at Xanthus ; of Wood at Ephesus ; of Lebas 
and Waddington in Asia Minor ; of the German expedition to Perga- 
mos ; of the excavations of General di Cesnola in Cyprus ; or of Schlie- 
mann's on the site of Troy. But in seeking to obtain a connected 
view of the explorations in Greece proper within the last few years — 
the most eventful epoch in archaeological research — we first meet the 
last named renowned excavator — a German by birth, an American 
citizen by adoption, a denizen of Athens by preference, and the father 
of a Greek family. His romantic career is too well-known to need 
comment here. Suffice it to say that the whole-hearted devotion, the 
undaunted perseverance and energy with which he entered upon a 
pursuit quite new to him, coupled with the surprising luck which at- 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 369 

tended his every step, achieved triumphs which have secured to his 
name a foremost place in the annals of archaeology. He was certainly 
the greatest excavator that ever lived. 

Unfortunately his proneness to adhere to a priori theories, unsup- 
ported by adequate authority and untenable by the results of his own 
researches, often led him into absurd conclusions; and this kind of 
amour propre was such as to induce him to discontinue an excavation 
rather than to permit it to bring forth evidence exceeding what he 
deemed necessary for the maintenance of a ready-made theory. He 
misconceived the bearing even of the greatest of his undertakings — the 
excavations at Hissarlik — because he persuaded himself that he had 
discovered the treasure of Priam. The munificence of the German Em- 
peror, however, enabled Prof. Dorpfeld to resume and continue these 
excavations during the last three years, with the result that the actual 
Troy of Homer has at last been unearthed. Its walls stand on a higher 
and more modern level ; they are more extensive and of a much finer 
workmanship than those of the smaller and poorer town found by 
Schliemann, which is now proved to have been a considerably older 
foundation, perhaps 2000 B.C. The walls discovered by Dr. Dorpfeld are 
well preserved and answer, in all essentials, as does also the pottery 
found there, to the remains of Mycenae and Tiryns — strongholds 
which Homer describes as inferior to the sacred city of Ilion This 
similarity has a material bearing upon the investigations which we will 
now enter upon. 

This short reference to Schliemann's work beyond Greece was 
necessary, as we have now to consider, in the first place, his explora- 
tion of sites in Greece proper. In the recent great development of 
archaeological researches in Greece, Schliemann's excavations do not 
come first in point of time ; but they reveal an entire era of Greek 
civilization hitherto unknown, and they demonstrate, in the clearest 
manner possible, its earliest growth. Therefore, they are essential to 
a reliable appreciation of the value of excavations relating to later 
periods. His enthusiastic admiration of Homer, which had urged him 
to excavate Troy, would not allow him to rest, as he himself de- 
clared, until he had traced the heroes he worshipped to their own 
Hellenic homes. He sought the .footprints of Odysseus in Ithaca (1878) 
and essayed some search at Orchomenos (1881) and later at Pylos and 
in Laconia. But the spot in Greece which most attracted him was the 
city of Agamemnon — Mycenae of mythic renown — the colossal, grim, 

and rugged remnants of whose battlements had looked down for ages, 
24 



370 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

sphinx-like, upon the wayfarer from the plain of Argos to Corinth. 
Standing on the remote and inaccessible plateau of a rocky eminence, 
the huge Cyclopean walls of this desolate citadel, which rise in parts to 
a height of more than thirty feet, have suffered less than many a later 
building on the lowlands. Two rampant lions of strange Asiatic 
aspect, sculptured over the great northwestern gateway which leads 
into the triangular enclosure, lend additional mystery to a spot insepa- 
rably associated with the most tragic stories in early Greek tradition. 
This was the scene of the terrible feud between Atreus and Thyestes ; 
it was within these walls that Agamemnon, on his return from Troy, 
was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover ^Egisthus ; and 
here Orestes later took vengeance upon his own mother. The poets who 
made these traditions the theme of some of the greatest of Greek trage- 
dies must have visited the scene of the legends, — so faithful are some 
of their descriptions of the fortress and its neighborhood. The "Aga- 
memnon" of iEschylus, the " Electra" of Sophocles, the " Orestes " of 
Euripides, added to the dread which popular fancy gave to the ruins of 
Mycenae, left desolate after its destruction by the Argives, 463 B.C. ; 
and travelers are taken over the scene of those successive tragedies, as 
we know from the testimony of Pausanias, who relates that he also 
was shown by the cicerone of his own time the five graves of Agamem- 
non and his companions, as well as the place, outside the consecrated 
ground, where Clytemnestra and ^Egisthus were laid to rest 

A statement so circumstantial was enough to fill Schliemann with 
the determination to substantiate it It is true that the words of Pau- 
sanias were generally understood to point, for the site of the tombs, to 
the lower town, remains of which are visible below the citadel, and 
which, encircled also by a Cyclopean wall, contains the famous " Treas- 
ury of Atreus." This is a circular and vaulted chamber lined, until a 
comparatively recent time, with plates of bronze, such as Homer de- 
scribes in the case of similar buildings. The richness of this decora- 
tion, which was ruthlessly torn down and looted by the Turkish 
governor of the Morea, gave rise to the popular legend that this and 
six other adjoining structures were royal treasuries. It has now been 
positively established, however, that they were used as tombs. 

But Dr. Schliemann was determined to disinter Agamemnon ; and, 
after some preliminary trials during February, 1874, he proceeded in 
August, 1876, to clear the space next to the upper wall and to the right 
of the entrance through the Lion Gate. Having soon come upon some 
pieces of archaic pottery, traces of Cyclopean structures, and sepulchral 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY : RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 3T1 

slabs bearing rude sculptures, he felt encouraged to persevere on this 
spot. There, shortly afterward, he discovered a circular construction, 
eighty- two feet in diameter, marked by upright stones which supported 
horizontal slabs. They evidently formed a semicircle of benches, and 
these Schliemann identified as the circular agora referred to by Eurip- 
ides ; and as Homer speaks of the elders sitting on stones which 
formed a sacred enclosure, and Pausanias alludes to an ancient cus- 
tom of burying kings and chiefs in such places, Dr. Schliemann felt 
convinced that the desired tombs would soon be found. Luck, in- 
deed, favored him again. Toward the end of- October, after coming 
across an opening, cut into the rock, twenty-one feet by ten feet, which 
was in fact an empty tomb, he discovered, fifteen feet below the level 
of the same rock, five tombs within the space of the agora and a sixth 
just outside it, containing, on a layer of pebbles, the remains of seven- 
teen persons in all, of whom three were women and three were chil- 
dren. One body, which must have undergone some sort of embalming, 
was found almost perfect. The theory which Dr. Schliemann evolved 
from the position in which the bodies were found, in order to make 
it tally with his assertion that the bodies were those of Agamemnon and 
the other victims of the tragedy, need not here be insisted upon. He 
was very determined to make the discovery fit in with the passage in 
Pausanias, which is at best of doubtful interpretation, and, having an- 
nounced in a famous telegram to the King of Greece that he had 
unearthed his illustrious predecessor, he suddenly put a stop to the ex- 
cavations. No more tombs were required. Unfortunately for this ro- 
mantic theory, the Greek Archaeological Society shortly after continued 
and completed those excavations, bringing to light many more tombs. 
Be that as it may, Schliemann's discovery was in itself so marvel- 
lous, so important in its bearing on archaeology, that it needed no 
legendary attributes to enhance its merit The vast number of valua- 
ble objects that Schliemann triumphantly brought to Athens — jewelry, 
armor, apparel, vases, and the like, — and which, according to very 
ancient custom, had been buried with the illustrious dead and were at 
the time of this discovery unique of their kind, announced the exist- 
ence of a civilization and an . art hitherto unknown. The wealth and 
splendor of these tombs spoke both of the high rank of those whom 
they enshrined and of the advanced state of culture in which they must 
have lived. The " Mycenaean treasure," as it may now be seen ex- 
hibited in the Central Museum at Athens, shows those heroic skeletons 
arrayed in diadems of gold, gold belts, and baldrics, with leaflets of 



v 



372 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

gold spread over their robes, their richly inlaid armor lying beside 
them. In one case a pure gold mask, reproducing the features of the 
dead, was laid over the face ; and the stone mould on which similar 
masks were pressed out was found during later excavations on the same 
spot. The women lay decked in jewelry of the finest workmanship, 
with diadems, necklaces, finger- and ear-rings, bracelets and brooches ; 
and in each tomb, gold and silver vessels, which had held provisions 
for the next world, were placed within reach of the dead. The actual 
money value of the gold found reached $20,000, a sum which must 
have been equal to untold wealth at that very remote time ; while the 
artistic and scientific worth of the find is simply incalculable. 

To what date, then, could those marvellous objects be referred? 
Prior to their discovery Greek history was not traceable farther back 
than the beginning of the seventh century B.C. We have now tangi- 
ble evidence of an advanced state of civilization at least five centuries 
earlier, and of the existence of a powerful kingdom in the Peloponnesus 
long before the Doric invasion. Not only this, but the opinion long 
entertained is now confirmed that " the Homeric poems represent not 
the beginning but the decay of an old civilization, not the first spring- 
ing into life of a youthful culture, but the experience, and even the 
sadness, of men who were heirs to bye-gone greatness and felt degen- 
erate in comparison with their ancestors." 

At first, the complete absence of any similarity to the art of later 
classic times induced many to ascribe the Mycenaean finds not to that 
pre-Homeric period, but to very recent decadent and barbarous times. 
Their heavy design and intricate ornamentation, their naive conception 
and clumsy execution, reminded the casual observer of Byzantine or 
Celtic workmanship. Others associated them with the Gauls, who 
overran Greece during the third century of our era, or with the Middle 
Ages — much in the way that the heraldic appearance of the lions over 
the great gateway of Mycenae misled the French officers of the expedi- 
tion to the Morea into the supposition that they were remnants of the 
French occupation of the Morea during the thirteenth century. The 
fact, however, has now been established that the Mycenaean art is the 
immediate outcome of the Phenician intercourse with Greece. And 
in this instance again we recognize the fidelity with which Greek 
legends reflect historic facts, when they refer to Perseus as having 
built the walls of Mycenae with the help of the Cyclopes from Lycia, 
and trace the descent of the Pelopidae from Tantalos, King of Phrygia. 

These conclusions have now been firmly established, thanks to the 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 373 

exhaustive excavations continued at Mycenae by the Greek Archaeo- 
logical Society. Within the citadel the foundations of a palace have 
been unearthed, of the same period as the tombs and answering to the 
Homeric description of a kingly abode ; also the ruins of a later Doric 
temple. In the lower town nearly a hundred tombs, similar to those 
in the agora and almost as rich in objects — in gold, silver, bronze, and 
ivory — have been found. But the most conclusive confirmation has 
been obtained in excavations carried on within the last few years in 
the Greek islands, by way of which Phenician trade extended to 
Greece — in Ehodes (necropolis of Ialysus), in Cyprus (necropolis of 
Arsinde), in Crete (necropolis of Cnossus), in Santorin (amid remains 
earlier than the volcanic eruption which transformed the aspect of the 
island), and in Amorgos. Also on the Greek mainland, in Thessaly, in 
Laconia, in Bceotia, in Attica, and in the Acropolis itself ; and finally 
in Prof. Ddrpfeld's excavations at Hissarlik, to which reference has 
already been made. The remains of the Homeric Troy are deemed 
the oldest of what is now known as the " Mycenaean civilization " ; 
those of Santorin are ascribed to the sixteenth century ; those of 
Ialysus to the fourteenth ; and those of Mycenae itself to the twelfth 
or thirteenth century. 

Contemporaneous with these latter are the majestic walls which 
crown Tiryns, a rock rising from thirty to sixty feet out of the 
southern extremity of the plain of Argos and overlooking the iEgean 
Sea. Its flat and sloping surface, nine hundred and eighty feet long 
and three hundred and thirty feet broad, forms an upper and lower 
citadel surrounded by fortifications of which Pausanias speaks as no 
less wonderful than the pyramids of Egypt and which won for Tiryns 
the Homeric epithet of " wall-girt," or rather "rich, powerful in walls." 
They are the most magnificent example of Cyclopean architecture 
extant, and are built up of enormous, rough-hewn blocks of limestone, 
measuring from five to ten feet in length and three in breadth and 
thickness, the smaller weighing from three to four tons, while an im- 
mense slab, forming the floor of a chamber, weighs some twenty tons. 
The walls, which in parts rise to a height of sixty-five feet, are more or 
less uniformly twenty -six feet thick, except in the upper citadel, where 
they attain to fifty and even fifty-seven feet thickness and contain a 
vast number of niches, passages, and chambers. Staircases sunk in 
these walls connect upper and lower galleries, and towers of enormous 
strength rise at the angles of the enclosure, which is entered by a gate 
similar to the Gate of Lions at Mycenae. The details of this unique 



374 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE 

specimen of military architecture have been brought to light by the ex- 
cavations of which we shall now speak, but the position and grandeur 
of its remains had not failed to attract the attention of early travelers. 

Tiryns was fabled as the birthplace of Hercules. In common with 
its suzerain at Mycenae, it was deprived of its ancient power by the 
Doric invasion, and, after it finally succumbed to the jealousy of 
Argos, remained desolate. The evidence of the blocks strewn about 
shows that the place is practically in the state in which it was left 
immediately after its destruction 463 B.C. The huge mass of ruins 
which encumbered the upper citadel had not been disturbed by any 
systematic search ; the debris of a church and other Byzantine struc- 
tures did not invite much notice. It was left for Dr. Schliemann to 
repeat here, in a much more complete and perfect manner, the tri- 
umphs which his enthusiasm seemed always to insure. While 
exploring Mycenae, he had sunk here also some shafts ; but he 
undertook the excavation of the citadel of Tiryns resolutely in 
1884-1885, and he took the precaution this time to associate with 
him in his labors a distinguished architect and archaeologist, Dr. 
Dorpfeld, the present director of the German School at Athens, 
who conducted the work on strictly scientific lines. It was not long 
before Schliemann was enabled to announce, in a sensational tele- 
gram, the discovery of a vast palace with innumerable columns, 
wall-paintings and vase-paintings of plants and animals — " a discovery 
which has no parallel." Partly on account of the previous hasty 
conclusions of the discoverer, and partly owing to the prominence of 
Byzantine remains and the insufficiency of the then extant data re- 
garding the newly discovered epoch of civilization, Schliemann's 
assertions were doubted and even ridiculed. The discovery was set 
down as nothing more wonderful than those of late Byzantine struc- 
ture. A hot controversy ensued and Dr. Schliemann, accompanied by 
Prof. Dorpfeld, met the critics face to face at a memorable meeting 
held in London under the auspices of the Hellenic Society. The proof 
they were enabled to lay before the learned audience was so incontro- 
vertible as to establish beyond doubt the discovery of another and more 
important link in the continuity of Greek culture and to confirm the 
historic value of the Homeric poems. 

The palace Schliemann had announced was no deception. It was a 
complete and perfect example of such an edifice as Homer describes 
as the residence of great kings — Priam, Menelaus, Alcinous, — with 
its r megaron (men's apartments), gyncecon (women's apartments), aulce 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 375 

(courts), bath-room, vestibules, porticos, etc. ; and its dimensions and 
character fixed its age with unerring precision, proving it to have been 
even grander and older than anything mentioned by Homer. Its dec- 
orative remains were no less remarkable. Some rooms were paved in 
concrete, ornamented with red and blue designs ; portions of the ala- 
baster frieze of the megaron were inlaid with a blue glass-paste forming 
ornaments such as those of Mycenae and Orchomenos ; and fragments 
of plaster were found with vividly colored spirals, meanders, and 
rosettes. These attempts at fresco-painting are, no doubt, rude and 
only five colors appear in them ; but they are marked by extraordinary 
vigor of execution and freshness of treatment, especially the remark- 
able fragment representing a man in a kneeling posture- on the back of 
a furious bull and holding on by the horns. The pottery unearthed 
at Tiryns is also similar to that of Mycenae, and the same Phenician 
influence, both in ornament and architecture, is manifest. The system 
of fortifications is the same as that met with at Hadrumetum, Utica, 
Thapsus, Carthage, and other Phenician centres. And the blue glass- 
paste referred to above is none other than the hyanos of which Homer 
speaks as used in decorating the frieze of the palace of Alcinous. It 
is known to have been of Phenician manufacture. 

Of the origin and date of this civilization there is, therefore, no 
longer any doubt. The excavations of the citadel and of the palace 
of Tiryns have furnished us with the evidence of its last efforts and 
of the beginning of its decadence. With the downfall of the power of 
Mycenae and Tiryns a retrograde epoch set in under the rude and 
hardy Dorian conquerors from the north, until a revival supervened, 
the character and exact bearing of which were, until lately, shrouded 
in deep mystery. The exuberance of beauty, the almost superhuman 
grandeur, of the classic art of Greece seemed a marvel comparable 
only to the mythical birth of Athena, armed and fully developed ; but 
the pickaxe of the excavator has now solved the riddle, and the mar- 
vellous discoveries of the last few years have supplied the missing link 
in this romantic search after the unknown. The results obtained will 
form the subject of a second and concluding article. 

J. GrENNADIUS. 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN 

GREECE.— n. 

In a first article on this subject, which appeared in these pages last 
May, after some preliminary remarks on the progress of the science 
of archaeology during recent times, the training and the qualifications 
necessary for the exploration of ancient sites were discussed; and, 
finally, the excavations carried on in Greece proper were considered, 
beginning with those researches which led to the discovery, on the 
rocky eminences of Mycenae and Tiryns, of evidence pointing to the 
existence of a civilization much earlier than any of which Greek 
history speaks. 

Between the remains of that civilization and the later classic art of 
Greece a connecting epoch of gradual development was assumed to 
have intervened; but of its precise character and tendency there 
existed but meagre testimony : this more especially as regards the 
steps by which Attic art attained to its full expansion — to that exu- 
berance of perfection and beauty which transfixes us in wonderment 
and admiration. Of the early efforts of this school much less was 
revealed to us — either by ancient authors or through extant remains — 
than of the development of art in those centres which were subse- 
quently overshadowed by the glories of Athens. Lucian, in his 
''Rhetorical Precepts," alludes to early Attic sculpture as rigid, 
labored, and sharply outlined; and the name of Endoeus occurs in 
the middle of the sixth century as that of a pupil of the mythical 
Daedalus. Beyond such indications, however, little was positively 
known of the growth of Athenian art. 

This missing link also was destined to be discovered by the pick- 
axe of the excavator, and that on another Acropolis — on the immortal 
rock to which this generic name is specially applied, as to the most 
renowned of the several fortified eminences rising sentinel-like over 
many an ancient site in Greece. The Acropolis of Athens symbolizes 
in itself the history not only of that city but of the whole of Greece ; 
and the successive transformations of its ground plan and outward 
aspect are but a record of the vicissitudes which the country experi- 



736 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

enced. It served from time immemorial both as a citadel and a 
sanctuary, and in its double capacity had to submit to successive 
assaults of racial enmity and religious fanaticism. Time and the 
elements proved less inclement than the devastations wrought by man. 
Of these the most memorable are the first one which history records, 
and a later one — that which is most deplored by humanity at large. 
When the Persians overran Attica (b. c. 480) previous to their dis- 
comfiture at Salamis, they sacked, burnt, and razed to the ground 
everything which then stood upon the Acropolis ; only portions of' its 
Pelasgic outer walls remained, and survive to this day from prehis- 
toric times. The Periclean reconstruction of the great sanctuary 
proved as remarkable for its solidity as it was unequalled in beauty. 
The Parthenon stood to all intents and purposes perfect and entire up 
to the year 1687, when the Venetians, who under Count Konigsmark 
besieged the Acropolis, deliberately bombarded the temple, knowing 
it then to have served as a powder magazine to the Turkish garrison. 
The explosion which occurred on the evening of September 26 is 
justly regarded as the greatest calamity that has ever befallen the 
interests of art; and the devastation of the noble ruin was consum- 
mated when Lord Elgin carried away, with other remains, the sculp- 
tures of Phidias. 

But what had been the fate of the earlier buildings ravaged by the 
Persians ? Ancient writers are silent on this point ; and no one in 
modern times so much as assumed to seek their traces on a site so com- 
pletely possessed and swayed by the brilliancy of its later glories. 
These absorbed the thoughts of the scholar and claimed the undivided 
attention of the artist. The remnants of all other times were deemed 
a desecration of the hallowed spot. It was reserved for the persever- 
ance and zeal of the excavator to add to the value of Phidian art by 
bringing to light its own parent stock. All through the Eoman, By- 
zantine, Frank, and Turkish times the Acropolis served as a citadel, 
while the Parthenon itself had been converted first into a church and 
then into a mosque. The Erechtheion, the Pinakotheka, the Propyl sea, 
were all transformed into dwelling-houses, the first of these buildings 
having been occupied at one time by the harem of a pasha, A whole 
quarter of nondescript structures, built on the Acropolis partly out of 
various ancient fragments and partly with lath and plaster, housed, 
prior to the war of independence, the entire official Turkish population 
of Athens. It was only when the country was freed from the Turks 
that the sacred hill recovered its dignity as the shrine of art and 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 737 

archaeology. The ancient temples were gradually freed from the 
interpolations which disfigured them, and the Turkish hovels and 
shanties were swept away. The last of these still served, in the early 
'sixties, as a storehouse for such ancient fragments as have since found 
a permanent home in the special museum built on the lower ground 
of the rocky plateau. . 

The first clearing rendered possible an accurate study of the topog- 
raphy of the Acropolis and its temples ; and this pursuit absorbed for 
a long time the attention of archaeologists as well as the funds which the 
Greek government could devote to the work. In 1853, M. Beule, a 
member of the French school at Athens, discovered under the Turkish 
bastions the gate to the Propylaea which bears his name ; and since 
then every nook and corner of the sacred enclosure has been explored, 
measured, and surveyed. Even mediaeval and later structures have 
been demolished in quest of ancient fragments. But no one had yet 
thought of excavating the very soil of the Acropolis. The works, 
however, which had been carried on during many years in connection 
with the exploration of its surface, brought to light, by a mere chance, 
certain pieces of sculpture of a remarkable type. In 1863 the re- 
moval of some debris around the foundations of the northern wall of 
the Erechtheion, revealed a headless, seated statue of Athena ; and in 
the following year the truncated statue of a man bearing a calf on his 
shoulders (now known as the Moschophoros) was unearthed in an oppo- 
site portion of the plateau. These and some other fragments, which 
successively cropped up in similar circumstances, were of a type so 
distinct from the sculpture generally associated with the Acropolis 
that they pointed to the existence of an earlier school and at the same 
time indicated the probability of a rich store of like objects being hid 
underneath. It thus became a matter of the highest importance to dig 
down to the very rock and overturn every foot of earth in the walled 
enclosure. This important work was inaugurated in 1882, when the 
embankment, some thirty-five feet deep, which covers the eastern foun- 
dation wall of the Parthenon, was excavated and soon yielded a most 
important cine both to the nature of the sculptures which adorned the 
earlier buildings on the Acropolis, and to the successive changes which 
had preceded its condition during classic times. Some fragments of 
the head of the seated statue of Athena found in 1863 at the other end 
of the enclosure were recovered here, and showed the goddess as 
engaged in a contest ; while other pieces of sculpture of the same 

primitive workmanship revealed, when pieced together, one group 

47 



738 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

representing the contest of the gods against the giants, and another 
group, that of Hercules against the Lernsean hydra. The rough state 
of the back of these sculptures indicated that they had originally stood 
in the pediments of some temple more ancient than those now existing 
on the Acropolis ; while there were traces of a vivid coloring, of the 
reliefs against a dark-blue background, which was evidently intended 
to give boldness to the as yet feeble technique of the sculpture. 

After a lapse of two years the excavations, having been resumed 
in the winter of 1885, resulted, during the first days of the following 
February, in the most wonderful find which the Acropolis had yet 
yielded. The space between the Erechtheion and the northern 
wall, which had revealed the first archaic sculpture in 1863, was now 
attacked, and was found to consist of a bewildering mass of archi- 
tectural fragments, hewn and rough stones, broken inscriptions, 
sculptures and pedestals, debris of all kinds, earth and rubbish, heaped 
together and evidently thrown in to fill up and bring to a level the 
hollow formed by the underlying rock dipping toward the outer wall. 
Here, at a depth of twelve to fourteen feet below the surface, fourteen 
female statues in marble were found lying prostrate, of which 
eight were in an almost perfect condition, the heads being unin- 
jured. Traces of fire were noticeable on most of them, but all 
were marked by vivid coloring, the eyes, hah', face, the ornaments, and 
raiment being picked out in brilliant and varied tints. The most 
striking characteristic, however, of these remarkable statues consisted 
in their almost unvarying similarity of trait, posture, and drapery. 
They are all of the stiff, conventional archaic form, with narrow oblique 
eyes, the lips drawn into a smile, half awkward, half proud, the left 
arm falling rigidly by the side, while the right, formed of a separate 
piece of marble fitted into a socket, is extended forward and holds an 
apple or pomegranate. The coiffure is of an especially elaborate and 
elegant treatment, and the drapery clings closely to the body in rather 
heavy folds, of a formal and stiff pattern. So close is the similarity 
of characteristics running through them all that at first sight they seem 
to represent one and the same personality ; and for this reason they 
were at the outset supposed to be so many presentments of Athena, 
For various conclusive reasons this supposition has been abandoned, 
and the most likely, though still problematic, explanation seems to be 
that they were votive offerings of individual female devotees who 
desired thus to place themselves under the constant protection and 
the auspicious recollection of the goddess, near whose temple the 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 139 

statues must have stood ranged. Or, again, they may have been the 
statues of Athenian maidens devoted to the service of the goddess. 

In spite of these doubts, and notwithstanding their conventionality 
and stiffness, these early specimens of Athenian art possess a strange 
and indescribable charm. They bear the impress of a deep religious 
feeling and are the outcome of an artistic effort which has just begun 
to feel emancipated by a freer inspiration, but has not yet succeeded 
in detaching itself from a preconceived and rigid type. They mark 
the period of evolution in Attic art which set in early in the sixth 
century, but which is not yet observable in the Hercules groups to 
which we have alluded, and which are of an even earlier date. Thus 
this marvellous discovery brought us, by one bound, into immedi- 
ate contact with an epoch hitherto vaguely surmised ; it also lent fresh 
interest to a search already exciting and productive. The Greek 
government was encouraged to prosecute the excavations uninterrupt- 
edly for three more years up to January, 1889, by which time the 
whole of the area of the Acropolis was thoroughly explored, every 
inch of earth down to the underlying rock having been raked up and 
minutely examined. The result was perhaps the most important 
archaeological campaign yet undertaken. The counterpart of the 
group of Hercules and the Hydra, worked in the same material — a 
calcareous poros-stone, a grayish tufa — and colored with even greater 
brilliancy, was discovered much shattered and mutilated, but still 
susceptible of reconstruction. When put together in the Acropolis 
Museum it showed the struggles of Hercules with the Triton and the 
Typhon, the head of the latter, more especially, being of extraor- 
dinary power and full of expression. Excellent colored reproductions 
of the fragments as well as of the fourteen female statues are given in 
the " Antike Denkmaeler " of the German Archaeological Institute of 
Athens. 

Many other sculptures, some in bronze, inscriptions of great 
historical and linguistic interest, fragments of pottery, and a multi- 
plicity of other objects, all of the same epoch and style, were also 
recovered. But perhaps the most important result of these excava- 
tions is the elucidation of the hitherto unknown topography of the 
sacred hill. In the beginning of the fifth century the Acropolis was 
already occupied by a large number of buildings, the most important 
of which was always the temple of Athena. The site of this early 
shrine (which was later considerably enlarged and ornamented by 
Peisistrates), as well as its dimensions and general character, have now 



740 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

been absolutely authenticated. It was situated to the east of the 
Periclean Parthenon, in close proximity to the Erechtheion and not 
far from the large mass of debris already alluded to. The foundations 
have been traced of a royal palace, also, which, at a still earlier period, 
stood on the Acropolis of Athens, as was the case with those of My- 
cenae and Tiryns. Furthermore the line of the Pelasgic walls, which 
originally enclosed but a restricted area on the rocky plateau, has 
been identified. 

These indications, and what was already known of the Persian in- 
vasion of the Acropolis, helped to determine the character of the other 
finds. When after the battle of Salamis the Athenians returned to their 
homes they found their sanctuaries wrecked so completely as to admit 
of no repair ; they could only be reconstructed. Elated by their vic- 
tories, proud of their newly-acquired prestige, and disposing of the rich 
booty they had captured, the people of Athens determined to do honor 
to their protecting divinity in a manner worthy of the city, by rebuild- 
ing the shrines on the Acropolis on a scale of great magnificence and 
in accordance with the gigantic advancing strides which, under the per- 
vading glorious inspirations, art had made in Athens. The remnants 
of the old temples and their maimed and shattered statues were deemed 
not worth preserving; their sanctity had abandoned them. The poros- 
stone of which the earlier structures were built was now good enough 
only for the new walls with which Cimon commenced to enclose a far 
more extensive portion of the plateau. And to this day the triglyphs, 
columns, and other fragments of the old temple may be seen imbedded 
in the northern wall. But this enlargement of the enclosed area com- 
prised deep hollows at the outskirts ; and in raising these to a level 
with the central portion of the plateau, the discarded and despised 
remnants of a less glorious past were there buried, to be resuscitated 
after a lapse of twenty-four centuries. Thus have they now been 
made to speak to us in unmistakable language, and to interpret the 
growth of that later art whose superhuman splendor had silenced its 
predecessors, as it now overshadows all that has since followed. 

Such, in brief, is the wondrous tale of the discovery of an earlier 
Athenian Acropolis which the liberality of the Greek government and 
the skill and enthusiasm of Greek scholars have brought to light. Great 
credit is due to Dr. Cavvadias, the Ephor of Antiquities, for the ad- 
mirable manner in which he conducted these memorable excavations ; 
thus proving himself a worthy successor of the venerable Prof. Ste- 
phanos Koumanoudes, the first and foremost of Greek archaeologists 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 741 

whose sacred zeal breathed new life into many an ancient monument, 
and whose life-long labors are in themselves a monument worthy 
the emulation of younger men. Nothing can be more hopeful for the 
future than this zeal and devotion of the Greeks to the imperishable 
legacy of their ancestors. The Greek public and the Greek legislature 
have never stinted the funds required of them for the excavation and 
preservation of the antiquities of the country. In proportion to her 
limited resources and to the magnitude of the work before her, no 
country has done so much as Greece in this connection. Of late years 
more especially the activity of Greek archaeologists has been very re- 
markable. It is impossible in the restricted limits of this article to 
give anything like an adequate account of the results achieved on the 
various sites lately explored. They can only be briefly enumerated 
here. 

The Greek Archaeological Society, which had already in 1876-77 
excavated the Athenian Asklepieion, on the southern declivity of the 
rock of the Acropolis, during the years 1881-95 prosecuted its re- 
searches of the greater and even more famous sanctuary of JEsculapius 
at Epidauros, again under the direction of Dr. Cavvadias. The whole 
of the vast precinct, sacred to the god, has been laid bare, bringing to 
light, besides the principal temple, the Stadion, the Gymnasium, the 
Propylaea, the Porticos, the superb theatre, — one of the largest in 
Greece and almost perfect in preservation, — a number of other build- 
ings, several important pieces of sculpture, and, above all, an unrivalled 
series of inscriptions which thoroughly elucidate a cultus hitherto im- 
perfectly understood, fully explain the healing processes practised by 
the Greeks, and shed, in many respects, a humorous light on the inner 
and familiar aspects of Greek life. The clearing of the Stadion and 
the theatre still continues, with results of the highest archaeological 
interest, elucidating many contested points as to the athletics of the 
Greeks. The sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis had been, from time im- 
memorial, not only one of the most sacred spots in Greece, but one 
whose mystic interest had never been clearly determined. The precise 
nature of the Eleusinian mysteries remains to this day an unsolved 
secret. The details of the site itself were up to a comparatively 
recent time but vaguely known. In 1815 the Society of Dilettanti 
made an imperfect attempt to explore it. The French savant, Lenor- 
mant, went a little farther during his researches in 1860-61. But the 
honor of its entire and thorough exploration belongs to the Greek 
Archaeological Society, which, assisted financially by the Greek gov- 



742 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

eminent, carried on systematic and exhaustive excavations from 1882 
to 1890 under the direction of Dr. Philios. The situation and charac- 
ter of the entire group of buildings which constituted the sanctuary 
have been determined, very important pieces of sculpture have been 
recovered, and the large number of inscriptions found there has 
furnished a lucid account of the sacerdotal and administrative organi- 
zation of the sanctuary. These excavations have since been continued, 
the outlying portions of the site being now gradually cleared. Among 
the quite recent finds is a beautiful red-figured terra-cotta plaque, the 
representation on which has some as yet undefined connection with the 
mysteries. Besides these principal achievements, the Archaeological 
Society has been occupied during the last few years with several 
other less prominent but not less important undertakings in various 
parts of Greece, notably in the Necropolis of Tanagra, near Thebes, 
where a rich mine of the now famous statuettes, which go by that 
name, had unfortunately been already encroached upon by bands of 
poachers and illicit traders. 

But the field of research in Greece is so vast — it may be said to be 
practically inexhaustible — that no one body of men, no one government, 
can hope to explore it alone. And in this respect the Greeks have 
given proof of no envious or grasping and narrow mind. With a large 
and liberal spirit, worthy of the cause of science, but rarely met with 
in other quarters under precisely similar circumstances, the Greek gov- 
ernment admitted foreign societies and states to share in a work which 
enlists more and more the eager emulation of learned men, since it con- 
fers signal distinction upon those worthy to participate in it. The most 
noteworthy instance of this kind is the exploration of Olympia, not 
only on account of the celebrity of the spot, but because of the unpre- 
cedented richness of the harvest it yielded, as well as the august aus- 
pices under which the work was completed. The fame of the Olympic 
games, which had endured for twelve consecutive centuries, as well as 
the enchanting description, left to us by Pausanias, of the site in Elis, 
11 the fairest spot in Greece," as Lysias calls it, diminutive in extent but 
unequalled in the splendor and unsurpassed in the richness of its tem- 
ples, sanctuaries, and public buildings, adorned with no less than three 
thousand statues, a veritable museum of Greek art, and the shrine of 
the devotion of an entire race — all this was calculated, even at the 
dawn of the science of archaeology, to arouse a longing in the breasts 
of learned men for a search after the lost glories of Olympia. 

In a letter to Cardinal Quizini, Bishop of Corfu, in 1723, 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. U3 

Montfaucon expressed the conviction that the earth of Elis still 
enshrined innumerable remains of its past greatness. Fifty years later 
Winckelmann wrote : "I am convinced that a great harvest is to 
be reaped in Elis which would surpass all expectations, and that a 
thorough exploration of that spot will shed much light on the his- 
tory of art." And his ardor in this cause was such that it was 
humorously said of him that he could even become a Mussulman 
if only he were allowed to explore Olympia. To his dying day, in 
1786, Winckelmann, with the Teutonic perseverance, repeated : " That 
which one desires in earnest always becomes possible : I have this 
matter as much at heart as my history of art." The Society of Dil- 
ettanti deputed Eichard Chandler to visit the site in 1766. Chandler 
was followed by Fauvel, the French consul at Athens, and by John 
Hawkins, an English traveler, toward the close of the century ; by 
Colonel W. M. Leake in 1805 ; by (Ml and Dodwell in 1806 ; and by 
Cockerell in 1811. In 1814 Quatrem^re de Quincey published his great 
work " Le Jupiter Olympien, ou l'Art de la Sculpture Antique," and 
in. 1824 Lord John Spencer Stanhope issued his description of the plain 
©J Olympia. Finally in 1829, when, after the battle of Navarino, 
Charles X sent to the Peloponnesus a corps of occupation under 
Marshal Maison, the " Expedition Scientifique de la Moree," which 
accompanied the French army, attempted some researches on the site 
oi the great temple of the Olympian Zeus. These perfunctory exca- 
vations, however, resulted only in the recovery of a few pieces of 
sculpture, which are now preserved in the Louvre. 

But the complete exploration of the site, which was thus first 
conceived by a Frenchman, earnestly advocated by a Grerman, and 
practically initiated by a French expedition, is mainly due to the 
venerable Prof. Ernst Curtius, whose attempts date from 1852. He 
conceived and directed this vast undertaking, and it was through his 
influence that the late Emperor Frederic was induced to lend his 
patronage and to obtain from the Imperial Diet the necessary funds, 
which ultimately amounted to no less than $200,000. Excava- 
tions, carried on under a formal convention with the Greek govern- 
ment, were begun in 1875, and were continued during six consecutive 
winter campaigns on a thoroughly scientific and prearranged plan. 
Beyond some traces of the researches of 1829, and a few vestiges of 
walls, there remained above ground but few indications of the glories 
of Olympia. The games were celebrated for the last time in 393 A.D., 
and in the following year they were prohibited by a decree of the 



744 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Emperor Theodosius I. In 425 Theodosius II, in his iconoclastic 
zeal, ordered the very buildings to be burnt. They had already 
been denuded of their most precious objects by the repeated plun- 
dering of Koman and Byzantine emperors. The invasion of Greece by 
the Goths under Alaric, and, later, by the Slavs, carried havoc through 
what remained of Olympia. The temple of Zeus was then transformed 
into a fortress and surrounded by a massive wall built of the fragments 
of other monuments. Two terrible earthquakes, in 522 and 551, levelled 
to the ground both that temple and whatever else was still standing ; 
and the subsequent abandonment of the site by the inhabitants, who 
sought safety on higher ground, left the forces of nature to preserve 
from further devastation what the fury of man had spared. The two 
rivers within which the Altis, the sacred precinct, was confined, — the 
Alpheus and the Cladeus, — in course of time changed their channels, 
and by repeated inundations deposited layers of alluvial soil, from fif- 
teen to twenty feet deep, over the whole extent of the enclosure ; 
while, on the other hand, rains and landslips carried down the 
slopes of Mount Cronion, which shelters the Altis to the north, 
enormous masses of earth, thus helping to give a restful burial to 
the much shattered and devastated remains of what was once the 
"fairest spot in Greece." To remove this huge earthen shroud, to 
examine every stone, to mark every vestige that came to light, was 
the heroic task through which the German mission resolutely labored 
in their search after the hallowed relics of Olympia. And their devo- 
tion and perseverance were richly rewarded. " One hundred and thirty 
marble statues and reliefs, thirteen thousand bronze objects, six thou- 
sand coins, four hundred inscriptions, a thousand objects in terra-cotta, 
forty buildings : such was the wonderful booty won by the explorers." ' 
Yet the recovery of the famous Hermes of Praxiteles alone would 
have been deemed ample reward for their toil and expense. These 
treasures now fill an entire museum built near the spot through the 
liberality of M. Syngros, a Greek banker. And such is the flood of 
light they have shed on the particular branch of Hellenic life which 
was connected with Olympia, that we can now read Pindar with as inti- 
mate a knowledge of the details to which his odes refer, as if we had 
been eye-witnesses of the very events. It is perhaps not unwarrantable 
to add that to this resuscitation of the fame of Olympia we may trace, 
in no small degree, the enthusiasm which attended the recent revival 
of the Olympic games at Athens. 

1 Laloux et Monceaux, " La Restauration de l'Olympie." 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 745 

Not the least important result of this scientific triumph of the 
Germans was the emulation it excited among French scholars — an 
emulation far more honorable and beneficial than the competition in 
armaments. The French, who were the first to establish a permanent 
school of archaeology at Athens, had already signalized their presence 
in Greece by various minor explorations, the best known of which was 
Beule's discovery of the Propylaea gate. But the impression which the 
Olympian excavations created in the world of letters urged them to 
look around for an undertaking of comparable importance. The 
island of Delos, now uninhabited, but in the palmy days of Greece one 
of the most flourishing and lovely of the Cyclades, — the birthplace and 
revered shrine of Apollo, teeming with the wealth of pious offerings of 
the Hellenic world, studded with sanctuaries and temples, planted with 
a forest of statues and altars, the envied goal of sacred embassies, but 
now abandoned, bereft of vegetation, almost forgotten, and rarely visited 
but by ships under quarantine, — Delos had attracted the attention of 
French archaeologists as early as 1873. The first desultory researches 
of M. Lebegue, however, did not result in much of interest. The 
Greek Archaeological Society, which, after him, took up the work, 
was more successful. But the French school at Athens claimed the 
right of reversion, and instituted serious excavations in 1877, under 
MM. Dumont and Homolles. 

The distinguishing and, for the French savants, creditable feature 
of these excavations consists in the fact that, beyond the ancient 
fame of the Delian sanctuary, no precise indications were available 
as guides to its exploration. Delos was one of the few important 
centres in Greece which Pausanias did not visit ; while all the other 
ancient accounts of it which we know to have been written have 
been lost. Moreover, Delos, after suffering repeated spoliations, was 
plundered and completely devastated by one of Mithridates's generals 
in 87 B. c, and from that devastation it does not seem to have re- 
covered. What we know of its subsequent fate is, that the Knights of 
St. John used the ruins of its temples and public buildings as material 
for their churches and fortresses in the adjacent islands, and the god- 
less pillage of marble ready -hewn went on until quite recent times. 
Hence there was hardly any landmark left as a guide to the sites of 
the principal structures and especially to that of the great temple of 
Apollo. In spite of these disadvantages M. Homolles's work, which 
was carried on from 1877 to 1880 and was then continued by other 
members of the French school up to 1890, succeeded beyond expecta- 



746 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

tion. The inroads above referred to despoiled Delos almost completely 
of architectural and artistic remains. But the topography of the small 
island, which was but an extensive sanctuary, has been determined ; 
while the harvest of inscriptions, dating from the seventh century B. c. 
to the early years of our era, is so rich and valuable that it constitutes 
in itself a new and important source of Greek history. Contempo- 
raneously with the work carried on at Delos, another member of the 
French school, M. Maurice Holleaux, undertook the exploration of 
another sanctuary of Apollo, situated at the foot of Mount Ptoi'on, to 
the east of the plain which formed, until lately, Lake Copais, in 
Bceotia. The temple of Apollo Ptoios was celebrated as an ancient 
oracle of the god ; and M. Holleaux's researches have resulted not only 
in denning the position and structure of the temple itself, but in estab- 
lishing its great antiquity by a number of very important inscriptions 
and by a series of archaic statues in marble and bronze, the comparison 
of which latter with the like sculptures unearthed on the Acropolis 
as well as in Eleusis and Delos, elucidates the development of early 
Greek art. 

The French were apparently minded or destined by circumstances 
to bring to light the various ancient abodes of the sun-god in Greece. 
Their latest and greatest undertaking has been the excavation of the 
celebrated Delphic shrine of Apollo. The importance of this work, 
which is still in progress, is so exceptional, and the interest which 
attaches to the subject so absorbing, that it must be reserved for a 
separate and concluding article. That article will include a survey of 
the archaeological researches of the American school at Athens, which 
are already such as to do much credit to American scholarship. 

J. Gennadius. 



REPRINTED FROM 

"The Forum" 

FOR NOVEMBER, 1896 



Modern Archaeology : 
Recent Excavations in Greece — III 



By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1895, by the Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to re-publish articles is reserved. 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY : RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN 

GREECE.— III. 

In continuation of the recital of the work carried on by the foreign 
schools of archaeology established in Athens, this third article will deal 
with the exploration of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. Being one 
of the most important sites in Greece, in point of celebrity and ex- 
pected results, it was a prize for which the French had long striven, 
desiring to secure it from the Greek government as the only adequate 
equivalent of the concession of the Olympian exploration to the Ger- 
mans. Both were, no doubt, signal favors to two great and friendly 
nations, and both were conceded not without opposition on the part of 
Greek archaeologists and scholars, who, naturally enough, desired that 
the kudos of the exploration of sites of such paramount importance 
should rest with the country itself. But the Greek government was 
morally bouud in this matter by the engagement, informal and vague 
though it was, which its delegates at the Congress of Berlin had 
assumed toward the late M. Waddington, whose advocacy of the 
Greek cause on that occasion entitled him to special consideration. 
Moreover, the French School at Athens had already, in 1881 and 1887, 
made tentative excavations on the site, under MM. Foucard and 
Haussoullier, resulting in the discovery of some important data. So 
that after considerable delay a convention, similar to that regarding 
Olympia, was signed between Greece and France in April, 1891, the 
draft of which, however, was dated as far back as 1887. 

The recital of these circumstances will prove, I believe, of special 
interest to American readers. For, while the final negotiations of the 
convention were in progress, I was approached by a gentleman who was 
then agitating to secure the concession for the American School, and 
I was appealed to to use my influence with the Greek Prime Minister, so 
that preference might be given to the proposals submitted on behalf 
of that institution. Being then accredited as Greek Minister to the 
United States as well as to the United Kingdom, I did not fail to 
urge that request; but I was surprised to be officially informed, in 
reply, that at the time I had been so approached, and while subscrip- 



330 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

to the bravery of the ^Etolians, is specially memorable in connection 
with the subject of this article, because of the remarkable discovery 
to which I shall refer hereafter. 

The Second Sacred War, waged (357-346 B.C.) against the Pho- 
cians who had sought to appropriate the plain of Krissa, was instru 
mental in establishing the power of Philip of Macedon in Greece. But 
it was only under the Komans that the pillage of Delphi actually began. 
Sulla first seized the treasure for the payment of his troops, besieging 
Athens in 86 B.C. ISTero carried away 500 bronze statues, and, having 
been rebuked by the god for the murder of his mother, he parceled out 
the plain of Krissa among his soldiers and abolished the oracle. It was 
restored by Hadrian, and regained much of its former splendor under 
the Antonines. Pliny states that in his time there were still left some 
three thousand statues at Delphi. But Constantine appropriated most 
of these for the adornment of his new capital (a.d. 330) and removed 
there many of the other rich offerings, including the famous bronze tri- 
pod, formed of three intertwined serpents, which the king of Sparta had 
dedicated, out of the Persian spoils, in memory of the victory of Plataea, 
the names of the Greek states being incised on it. What still remains 
of this most ancient and most renowned of the world's art relics may 
be seen to this day in the Hippodrome at Constantinople ; its very di- 
lapidation recalling a great event — the entry into the imperial city of 
the conqueror Mohammed II (a.d. 1453), who, with a blow of his iron 
mace, broke off the head of one of the serpents as he sped on to Santa 
Sofia. Julian "the Apostate" (a.d. 362) vainly sought to instil new 
life into the oracle. Its plaintive answer was its last expiring gasp : 
"Tell the king the fair- wrought dwelling has sunk into the dust; 
Phoebus has no longer a shelter or a prophetic laurel, neither has he a 
sparkling fountain: the fair water is dried up." Finally, fifty years 
after Constantine, the neophyte Theodosius closed the temples, sup- 
pressed the oracle, and the triumphant fervor of the Christians worked 
havoc on all objects connected with the idolatrous worship. 

In spite of repeated plunders, Delphi must have preserved, almost 
to the last, the appearance of a veritable museum of art, such as Pau- 
sanias describes it (a.d. 160). He refers to some one hundred and 
fifty statues of gods and goddesses, the works of the most celebrated 
sculptors of antiquity ; to ten statues by Phidias, offered by the Athe- 
nians in memory of Miltiades and his companions in arms; to the 
Phryne of Praxiteles ; to many effigies of victors at the games, and to 
other innumerable offerings in marble, bronze, and gold. He describes 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY : RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 331 

the famous paintings of Polygnotus in the Lesche (Club-house) of the 
Cnidians, and he speaks of five temples besides the great shrine of 
Apollo. Of its two pediments the eastern was devoted to the repre- 
sentation of Apollo and the Muses, and the western to Dionysos and 
the Thyiades. The scenes figured on the metopes, as described by the 
chorus in the "Ion" of Euripides, related to the triumphs of gods over 
monsters ; while the two great victories over the barbarian invaders at 
Delphi were commemorated by golden shields on the architraves, 
dedicated by the Athenians and the JEtolians respectively. A bronze 
statue of Homer stood in the pronaos, on the walls of which were in- 
scribed the sayings of the Seven Sages ; and the iron chair on which 
Pindar sat when singing his " Hymns " to Apollo was preserved in the 
cella. Indeed the whole sanctuary typified the attributes of the great 
God of Light, the personification of Hellenic culture, as opposed to the 
obscurantism and ignorance of the barbarians. The statue of the god 
himself stood in the adyton, the holy of holies, where few mortals 
ever set foot, and where the omphalos, the navel and centre of the 
earth, was treasured. The omphalos was a white stone in the shape 
of half an egg, supported by two eagles, which, when sent by Zeus to 
the East and to the West, met in their onward flight at Delphi. Here 
also was the fissure through which the narcotic vapors issued; and 
over it stood the tripod on which the Pythoness, the prophet-maiden, 
sat and delivered the oracle. Her responses, often incoherent, were 
communicated to the enquirers in hexameter verse by the priests, all 
men of vast experience, great learning, and tried sagacity. That their 
ministry was on the whole beneficent is admitted not only by the testi- 
mony of great poets — Pindar, JEschylus, and Sophocles — but by Plato 
himself, who speaks of the oracle with respect and veneration. Pau- 
sanias refers furthermore to the Stoa (Portico) of the Athenians ; to the 
eight treasuries of the Hellenic states which had thus permanent estab- 
lishments at Delphi ; to the gymnasium, the theatre, and the stadwn. 

The site of the latter, on the highest point of Delphi, was clearly 
visible even before the excavations and was known among the peasants 
as Lakoma, "the hollow." So also the theatre, of which Cyriaco de* 
Pizzicolle (Cyriacus of Ancona) counted thirty-three rows of seats still 
standing in 1448, when he visited Greece. Some of the shafts of the 
temple, remains of the Stoa, and a considerable portion of the wall en- 
closing the sanctuary were also traceable. A number of inscriptions 
and other fragments were preserved in a rough building in the neigh- 
borhood, and during the preliminary excavations the French deter- 



332 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

mined also the site of the Lesche; but the rest of the sacred precinct 
was entirely covered by the modern village of Kastri. An important 
contribution to the topography of the site was the detailed plan made 
in 1888 by Herr Pomtow, who, with true German thoroughness, had 
marked every vestige of ancient building visible above ground and 
every house of the modern village. 

The villagers, though liberally compensated, were slow to exchange 
their old homes for the new settlement built for them half a mile far- 
ther down the hill, so that the excavations, inaugurated in October, 
1892 and continued leisurely until the following spring, were not seri- 
ously taken in hand till April, 1894. Since then, however, they have 
been actively pushed forward by a force of some three hundred and 
fifty laborers under the superintendence of M. Homolle, the director 
of the French School. The steep and uneven configuration of the 
ground and the deep accumulation of soil presented exceptional diffi- 
culties ; and the assistance of M. Convert, a distinguished French engi- 
neer, was called in for the establishment of an extensive system of 
inclined tramways, whereby the earth is shot down into the gorge of 
the Pleistos, while hewn stones and other fragments are set aside until 
their original position and proper destination can be determined. 

The explorers had not proceeded far when they came upon indica- 
tions of the highest interest During the preliminary excavations the 
French had opened up a part of the Sacred Way, the main road lead- 
ing to the temple, and now they discovered at its lower extremity a 
structure which originally enclosed the statues of the legendary kings 
of Argos. The pedestals of the statues were found with the names of 
Danaus, Hercules, Perseus, etc., written in the primitive style from 
right to left, apparently with the intention of intensifying the impres- 
sion of remote antiquity, while the signature of the sculptor, Antipha- 
nes of Argos, is inscribed in the usual way from left to right. As 
the site of this dedication of the Argives is accurately defined by 
Pausanias, its discovery served as an important guide to the situation 
of other monuments. Thus, a small structure measuring ten by six 
metres only, but of exquisite workmanship, unearthed in June, 1893, 
was ascertained to be the Treasury of the Athenians. Sculptured 
fragments and blocks of marble, recovered at considerable distances, 
were easily identified as parts of this building, both by the style and 
subject of the sculptures which stood on the metopes, and which re- 
ferred mostly to Theseus and Hercules, and by the sequence of the in- 
s< -ri ptions with which the walls of the Treasury were covered and which 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 333 

related to Athens and to the part taken by Athenians in the Pythian 
games. The identity of the building, which can now be almost en- 
tirely reconstructed, was finally placed beyond doubt by the words 
A6ENAI . . . MAPAdn . . . which formed part of the dedicatory 
inscription. It determines the date of the building, erected out of the 
spoils of Marathon at about 485 B.C. ; and M. Homolle speaks of its 
merits as follows : — "I believe I am not exaggerating in characterizing 
it as a masterpiece of ancient art. I know of no monument of the 
beginning of the fifth century of a more careful, delicate, and elegant 
execution." Of no less importance is the certainty with which the 
date of the sculptures is fixed, whereby the development of Attic art 
immediately after the battle of Marathon is definitely ascertained. 

But by far the greatest prize was the discovery, among the ruins of 
the Treasury of the Athenians, of certain inscribed fragments the text 
of which was accompanied by a musical notation. It became at once 
manifest that the French explorers had had the good luck to recover 
undoubted original specimens of Greek music ; the only other discov- 
ery at all comparable to this having been a very short musical inscrip- 
tion found in 1883 by Prof. Kamsay at Tralles, in Asia Minor, on the 
monument of one Seikilos. 

Our knowledge of the music of the Greeks is based principally on 
the writings of Plato, Aristotle and his pupil Aristoxenos, Euclid, 
Nicomachos, Aristides Quintilianus, and, more especially, on the valu- 
able treatise of Alypios. These authors supply a complete theory of 
the art of music ; but of its practice with the Greeks there existed, up 
to the time of these discoveries, no example other than four manuscript 
fragments, only one of which — the beginning of Pindar's first Pythic 
ode — claimed to be of the classic period. This was first published by 
Athanasius Kircher in 1650, but its authenticity has not yet been 
established. The other three were transcribed from a manuscript in 
the library of Cardinal Sant' Angiolo and published in 1581 by Yin- 
centio Galilei, father of the great astronomer, and one of the originators 
of Italian opera. Of these three specimens — which, with all other 
available information on the subject, are reproduced in Fr. Bel- 
lermann's exhaustive work on Greek music — two are hymns to 
Calliope and Apollo, attributed to Dionysius, an unknown poet said 
to have lived in the first half of the fourth century of our era. The 
third and most perfect of all extant specimens is a hymn to Nemesis 
by Mesomedes, who flourished about the middle of the second century 
after Christ These, as well as a very small and uncertain fragment 



334 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE, 

of the " Orestes " of Euripides (v. 338-343), found among the papy- 
ruses of the Archduke Keiner and communicated by Mr. Charles- 
Wessely of Vienna to the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 
in June, 1892 (published in the " Revue des Etudes Grecques," V, 
265-28o', with notes by M. C. E. Ruelle), formed the sum total of our 
acquaintance with the practice of Greek music. 

It is therefore easy to conceive the importance attached to the dis- 
covery of the Delphic musical inscriptions. Of these, the one best 
preserved dates, as the style of the letters indicates, from the third 
century B.C., is inscribed on a stele, and consists of twelve couplets 
preceded by a honorific decree in favor of the composer Aristonous. 
Two other fragments contain the now famous " Hymn to Apollo," which 
has already become the subject of a considerable body of literature. 
Its text was first edited by M. Weil, 1 who considers it to have been 
composed at Athens for the soteria, the thanksgiving festival celebrated 
by the Athenians and the iEtolians in commemoration of the repulse 
of the Gauls. Their rout at Delphi saved the rest of Greece from in- 
vasion ; and a theoria, or sacred embassy, was deputed by Athens to 
offer thanksgiving for the intervention of the god, whose victory over 
the dragon was but the antetype of his annihilation of the barbarians. 
The poet then sings the praise of Athena and the glory of her immortal 
city ; and at this point the second fragment breaks off. Such is the 
theme of this grand hymn, which was chanted by the noblest maidens 
of Athens as they advanced at the head of the procession, past the Cas- 
talian spring and up the Sacred Way, to the Shrine of Apollo. 

This invaluable find was the fruit of the first autumn's campaign. 
In the following spring it was found possible to supplement and piece 
together some twenty other fragments constituting another similar 
hymn, the last line of which is, in this case, followed by a Delphic de- 
cree in honor of the author. This second hymn is also addressed to 
Apollo, whose protection it invokes for Delphi, for Athens, and for the 
government of Rome. It, therefore, dates after 145 B.C. when Rome 
subdued Greece. 

The musical notation on all these inscriptions, as in the manuscript 
specimens above referred to, is expressed by the letters of the Greek 
alphabet which, when marked upright, inverted, or tilted forward, over 
the syllables of the text, indicate^the various notes. Two sets of such 
musical symbols were in use with the Greeks : the one was vocal and 



i «« 



Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique," xvii, 561-583. Also " La Musique 
des Hymnes de Delphes," by Th. Reinach. Ibid. p. 584-610. 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 335 

is employed in the first; the other, instrumental and figures in the 
second of the two hymns to Apollo. As, however, the instrumental 
accompaniment would hardly have been noted at the sacrifice of the 
song itself, we must infer that not only the voices sang in unison, but 
that, in this instance at least, instruments and voices were in unison. 
With the aid of Alypios, M. Theodore Keinach transcribed the earlier 
of the two hymns into modern notation, although this provides for 
twelve notes only ; whereas the Greeks, with a finer perception of 
sound, used twenty-one notes within the octave. He was therefore 
obliged to raise the pitch of some notes, to lower that of others, 
and even to employ the same modern note in representing two different 
Greek symbols. These and other conclusions of M. Keinach have been 
criticised by Mr. Cecil Torr in an able pamphlet just issued, — " On the 
Interpretation of Greek Music." However this may be, the hymn dis- 
covered and deciphered by the descendants of the invaders whose 
discomfiture it celebrated, was, for the first time after a lapse of 
%o nearly t welv e centuries, again sung on March 27, 1894, before the 
King of the Hellenes, at Athens where it had been originally com- 



A discovery so absorbing in its scientific interest and so striking in 
its romantic associations could but add to the enthusiasm of the ex- 
plorers. Their expectations were centred on the site of the great temple 
of Apollo, which, however, ultimately yielded less than the least san- 
guine might have hoped. The lines of the foundations were clearly 
traced, the adyton was found marked by a large depression, and the 
aqueduct, which carried under the temple the waters of the Cassiotis 
spring, was discovered. Valuable information as to the rebuilding of 
the temple and its subsequent vicissitudes was also derived from the 
discovery of another hymn, in honor of Dionysos, dating from the lat- 
ter part of the fourth century, which, though unaccompanied by musical 
notation, is full of historic interest But not a fragment of sculpture 
and but few pieces of architectural importance have been unearthed. 
The only explanation seems to be, that some later Koman or Byzantine 
emperor must have made a clean sweep, not only of the statues and 
offerings in the temple, but of the sculpture of the pediments, of which 
Pausanias speaks as the work of Praxias and Androsthenes. 

The excavators were, however, repaid in another direction. Impor- 
tant and most valuable remains of three more treasuries were soon 
found. Opposite the Treasury of the Athenians stood that of the 
Boeotians ; built, in the shape of a Doric temple, of a fine quality of 



336 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

bluish limestone. The numerous inscriptions which covered the walls, 
and now help partly to reconstruct them, serve also to identify the 
building, referring as they do to Boeotian and principally Theban 
matters. On a commanding position between the two treasuries, and 
forming with them a large square into which the Sacred Way de- 
bouches, rose the Treasury of the Siphnians, the remains of which 
fully bear out the account of Pausanias as to its splendor and richness. 
The Siphnians, who had grown wealthy from their gold-mines, kept 
the oracle in good humor by devoting to it yearly a tenth of their 
produce. The profuse decoration of the doorways, cornices, and 
entablatures of their treasury — built entirely of Parian marble — are, 
in point of conception and execution, fully equal to those of the 
Erechtheion at Athens; while the sculptures of the extensive frieze, 
— 14 metres in length and 0.65 in height — almost all of which have 
been recovered and reconstructed, are the most perfect and most 
beautiful examples we possess of the archaic art of the sixth century 
at the moment of its development into the unsurpassed style of 
Phidias. The various mythological subjects represented by these 
sculptures are no longer a matter of conjecture, since it has been ascer- 
tained that the name of each figure was painted above or under it. 
The paint has disappeared, but the scratches made by the painter for 
his guidance are still sufficiently distinct to be deciphered with some 
care. The vigor of conception and the delicacy of execution of the 
frieze — casts of which are already exhibited at the Louvre — led to the 
supposition that it was the work of Athenian artists. M. Homolle, 
however, has, after some difficulty, deciphered an inscription, incised 
in Argive characters on the shield of one of the figures, which leaves 
no doubt that these sculptures are of the art of Argos. The figures 
which adorned the pediment have also been recovered and present many 
peculiarities. Of a less advanced school of art, they are inferior 
in technique. The upper part of the figures is cut out in the round, 
while the lower portion is only in relief. They all bear traces of rich 
coloring, and the harness, spear, arrow-heads, etc., were in metallic ap- 
plications. Another treasury, identified as that of the Sicyonians, has 
been unearthed lower down the Sacred Way. Its sculptured meto- 
pes—relating to the legends of the Dioscuri, the Argonauts, and the 
rape of Europa — are of delicate and careful workmanship of the sixth 
century ; they were originally entirely colored. 

Close to the Treasury of the Siphnians four caryatides were discov- 
ered They were at first attributed to that building, but are now believed 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 33T 

to have supported, on the polos — the tiara-like head-dress, decorated 
with delicate reliefs, with which they are crowned — a separate portico 
or tribune of some kind. They are of an early date, the drapery being 
treated in the style of the archaic statues of the Acropolis at Athens. 
A little beyond the Treasury of the Athenians the colossal Sphinx, the 
emblem of music and prophecy, mentioned by Pausanias as having 
been dedicated by the Naxians, has been found almost intact and has 
now been set up again on the imposing monumental column on which 
it originally stood. The pedestals of the statues of Lysander and his 
allies, dedicated after the battle of ^Egospotamos, have been unearthed ; 
that of Lysander, with the inscription of Ion the Samian, recording the 
downfall of the power of Athens. The bronze statues themselves 
were no doubt carried away at an early date. Similar must have been 
the fate of the statue of Philopoemen, dedicated by the Achaeans, the 
pedestal of which has also been recovered. 

The theatre, situated above the temple of Apollo, is in so good a pres- 
ervation as to rank after that of Epidauros, which is practically intact 
In its present condition the building dates from the Koman times. The 
^taction, still higher up the hill, built originally of Parnassus lime- 
stone, was reconstructed by Herodes Atticus with marble from Penteli- 
cus. Its exploration, which is still proceeding, has revealed, on one of 
the blocks of the southern wall, an inscription of the utmost interest, 
dating from the sixth century. It forbids, under pain of heavy fines, 
the use of new wine by those training for the foot-races. This and 
another inscribed decree of the fourth century, relating to a case of 
bankruptcy, fixing the rate of interest, and regulating the mode of lend- 
ing money, are among the most remarkable of the rich and voluminous 
body of Delphic inscriptions, several of which were found imbedded in 
the pavement of the Sacred Way. 

Of isolated works of art the most noticeable are a very fine marble 
statue of Antinous, almost intact, and an archaic Apollo of proportions 
sufficiently colossal to have made it serve as a buttress to a terrace wall 
of later date. The signature of the sculptor " . . . . medes of 
Argos," is legible on its base. Another statue of Apollo, of like style 
and dimensions, was found close by; and the two are supposed to 
have been part of the offering of the Lipari islanders in commemora- 
tion of their victory over the Tyrrhenians. Two more archaic Apollos 
(one somewhat mutilated), a Doryphorus, and a cow, of exquisite work- 
manship and almost perfect in preservation, are among the smaller 

t>ronzes secured. 
22 



338 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY : RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

But by far the greatest treasure which the excavations have so far 
yielded is a bronze statue 1.78 metres in height, unearthed last April. 
It represents a young man clothed in a chiton reaching to the feet and 
girdled at the waist, with sleeves half-way down the elbows. The 
right arm is extended, the hand holding the reins of a chariot. With 
the exception of the naked portion of the left arm, which is missing, 
the statue is absolutely perfect, and has a beautiful patina. The hair, 
curly and somewhat long, is bound with a diadem. The features, 
though reposeful, are animated by an expression of pride and joy ; and 
the eyes, set in enamel, give a startling, life-like look to a work which, 
in its serene and somewhat archaic treatment, impresses the observer 
as the creation of a great artist This impression is heightened by 
its dimensions, it being the largest Greek bronze statue extant It 
is cast in four pieces, which fit together at the girdle and under 
the folds of the sleeves with such nicety that they have been 
united without leaving any perceptible trace of juncture. Close by 
this statue portions of the hind legs and the tail of a horse have been 
found, leaving no doubt that they are all parts of a group representing 
the victor in a chariot-race. M. Homolle was not long in fixing upon 
Hiero as the victor thus commemorated. He is generally held to 
have won several races at both the Olympian and the Pythian games, 
and certain inscriptions unearthed in the vicinity seem to convert this 
supposition into a certainty, and to point to Ageladas — a Peloponnesian 
sculptor who had executed several works for the Despots of Syracuse 
and flourished between 470 and 460 B.C. — as the sculptor of the statue 
in question. Though these conclusions have been disputed in detail 
by M. Foucard, of the Acade'mie des Inscriptions, the French are not 
unreasonably elated by the fact that their exploration of Delphi has 
yielded as great a work of ancient art as the Hermes of Praxiteles, 
found by the Germans at Olympia. 

These excavations, the total cost of which is likely to exceed $200,- 
000, will, it is expected, be brought to a close next year. 

The more varied but no less important work carried on in Greece 
by the American School of Archaeology at Athens will form the sub- 
ject of a separate article. 

J. Gennadius. 



REPRINTED FROM 

44 The Forum" 

FOR JANUARY, 1897 



Modern Archaeology : 
Recent Excavations in Greece — IV, 

By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1895, by the Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to re-publish articles is reserved. 



MODEEN AECHJEOLOGY: EECENT EXCAVATIONS IN 

GREECE.— IY. 

In prosecuting the investigation of this subject we have now reached 
a point at which some account of the labors of the American School of 
Classical Studies is desirable, These labors mark an era in American 
scholarship ; and the firm and rapid steps with which the members of 
the School progressed from one success to another entitle them to high 
praise. The School was founded in Athens, under the auspices of the 
Archaeological Institute of America, in October, 1882. 

It is doubtful, however, if the results would ha ye been as satisfac- 
tory, but for the fact that the Government and the people of Greece, 
conscious of the duties imposed upon them by the imperishable herit- 
age of which they are the guardians, extended to the American scholars 
favors that are also an earnest of indelible gratitude for American sym- 
pathy and succor during the long struggle for independence. Prof. M. 
L. D'Ooge, Director of the School, declares in the Seventh Annual Ee- 
port that 

"The school could not possibly have enjoyed the advantages with which ifc 
has been favored, without the cordial support constantly given by the Greek Gov- 
ernment and its officials. This interest has been shown in so many ways that I 
cannot enumerate them all. Every possible f acility has been afforded the mem- 
bers of the School for study and investigation in free access to the museums, in 
liberty to copy or reproduce any objects of special interest, in grants of permission 
to excavate, in free use of the libraries of the Senate and of the University, and 
in introductions to officials in the interior, which greatly facilitated travel and 
study." 

It may be stated at the outset that both the intrinsic merit of the 
American explorations and the special interest which they naturally 
possess for the American reader call for a somewhat fuller narrative 
than was deemed necessary in the preceding articles ; while the absence 
of maps and plans in these pages renders a more detailed description of 
sites and structures inevitable. The several reports of the explorers 
themselves, which are scattered in various publications and are too tech- 
nical for the general reader, have naturally served as the basis of these 
articles ; but much new matter has been included. 



608 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

To the Archaeological Institute of America belongs the honor of 
having first entrusted to American scholars the exploration of a Greek 
site — that of Assos, in the Gulf of Adramyttium, on the south coast of 
the Troad. It was the first contribution of America to our knowledge 
of classic antiquity ; and the report of Mr. Joseph Thacher Clarke, who 
conducted the excavations (1881-2), shows that the results obtained 
were of great interest The unearthing of the theatre of Assos, more 
especially, was an achievement of considerable archaeological impor- 
tance. As, however, Asia Minor does not come within the scope of 
these articles, I need here but briefly state that Dr. J. R S. Sterrett, of 
the University of Virginia, having joined the School at Athens in 
1882, spent six weeks at Assos in deciphering the inscriptions there 
unearthed, and now exhibited, for the most part, in the Boston Mu- 
seum of Fine Arts. In the following summer he again visited Asia 
Minor with Prof. W. M. Ramsay, who had been sent out by the (Brit- 
ish) Asia Minor Exploration Fund. The results of his researches are 
recorded in two dissertations on the " Inscriptions of Assos " and the 
"Inscriptions of Tralles," published in the first volume of the "Papers 
of the American School at Athens.'' The second volume of this valu- 
able publication is occupied exclusively by the " Epigraphic Journey 
in Asia Minor" made by Dr. Sterrett, again in company with Prof. 
Ramsay, in the summer of 1884 ; and the third, by an account of the 
" Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor " (its expenses having been defrayed 
by the late Miss C. L. Wolfe, of New York) under Dr. W. H. Ward 
and Mr. Haynes, whom Dr. Sterrett accompanied in 1885. Of these 
two journeys, the former yielded three hundred and ninety-eight and 
the latter six hundred and fifty-one Greek inscriptions, almost all 
newly discovered and inedited. During these successive explorations 
Dr. Sterrett determined the sites of several ancient cities, — including 
that of Lystra, of the New Testament, — and gathered valuable material 
for the reconstruction of the map of districts in Asia Minor hitherto im- 
perfectly known ; while his labors in the field of Anatolian epigraphy 
— a branch of research requiring much patience and wide erudition 
—admittedly rank second only to those of Le Bas and Waddington. 
M. Waddington wrote :— " European scholars have hailed with delight 
the entrance of America into the old field of archaeological research, 
and will welcome such additions to our knowledge of Asia Minor as 
are contained in the account of the Wolfe Expedition." 

As the first American exploration in Greece proper, we may con- 
sider the survey of the Pnyx at Athens, made in 1883 by Mr. Clarke. 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 609 

That glorious hill and the remains upon it had never before been exactly- 
measured or figured with the aid of proper instruments. Mr. Clarke's 
plans accompany an able dissertation on the subject, contributed to the 
fourth volume of the "Papers " by Mr. J. M. Crow, one of the students 
of the School at Athens. 

But the chief mission of the School — the study of archaeology as a 
science — could be fulfilled only by the prosecution of original and 
systematic excavations. Work of this description was therefore under- 
taken in April, 1886, at Thorikos, on the southeast coast of Attica, 
within easy reach of Athens, and in the immediate proximity of the 
famous silver mines of Laurium. The name of Thorikos is still given 
to a village built on the very coast, near the harbor (now Porto Mandri) 
of the ancient town. It is early celebrated in fable as the home of 
Kephalos, the lover of Prokris. In the time of Cecrops, Thorikos was 
one of the twelve cities of Attica, prior to the great settlement of 
Theseus at Athens ; but later its importance seems to have diminished. 
It is referred to by Homer ("Hymn. Cer." 126), by Herodotus (lv. 99), 
by Thucydides (viii. 95), five times in Demosthenes, and elsewhere. 
Xenophon ("Hellenica,'' i 2) states that in the twenty-third year of the 
Peloponnesian War (-109 B.c.) the Athenians fortified the place with a 
wall, intended to protect the neighboring silver mines. Strabo men- 
tions Thorikos, but gives no details ; while Pausanias appears not to 
have visited it It must have fallen into ruins before the first century 
of our era, for Mela (" De Situ Orbis,'' ii 3) speaks of Thorikos and 
Brauronia as "olim urbes, jam tantum nomina." 

Coming to modern travellers, J. C. Le Roy gives, in his " Humes 
des plus beaux monuments de la Grece " (1758), ii 2, an account of 
what he considered to have been the remains of a hexastyle Doric 
temple in the vicinity of Thorikos. CoL Leake ("Topography of 
Athens and Duni" ii 70) with characteristic sureness of perception, 
describes it as "a stoa in the agora (forum) of Thoricus," 105 feet long 
by 48 feet broad. Dodwell (" Classical Tour," i 535) remarks that "as 
the whole of the ruin has fallen, and is nearly covered with thick 
bushes of lentiscus, it was not possible on my visit to develop its plan 
without making excavations." Such excavations were carried out even 
before the publication (1819) of the " Tour," by a mission of the 
Society of Dilettanti in 1812, and the results of those researches are 
included in "The Unedited Antiquities of Attica , ' (1817), pp. 57-59. 
The highly finished and accurate drawings of this publication show 
that portions of sixteen columns of the stoa were then standing in their 



610 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

original positions ; but of these only a few remnants were found by 
the American explorers. Their attention was therefore centred on 
the other remains. 

Dodwell speaks of the Acropolis of Thorikos, " on a pointed hill 
above the city," of the walls which surrounded it, the " curious and 
magnificent theatre," the seats of which were still preserved, and of a 
pointed gate of the Cyclopian or Tirynthian style in the wall of the 
theatre. But neither the description n^or the engraving of the theatre 
in Dodwell is accurate. Leake ( " D**«-," ii. 69 ) gives another plan of 
" the singular form " of the theatre ; but this also has been proved by 
the American excavators to be out of proportion. Wordsworth 
( " Athens and Attica," p. 210 ), after remarking that " a theatre was an 
appropriate edifice at Thoricus, for it was in the port of this place that 
Dionysus, the deity of the Athenian drama, first landed in Attica," 
goes on to explain, with greater accuracy than his predecessors, that 

" the outline of this theatre is not of a semicircular form ; it is of an irregular 
curve, nearly resembling the fourth of an ellipse, — the longer axis commencing 
with the stage, and the seats beginning from the lesser axis and running in tiers 
rising above each other concentrically with the curve. ... In the wall near 
the theatre is an old postern, surmounted by a pointed arch formed by approach- 
ing horizontal courses, in the same manner as the arches in the galleries at Tiryns. 
We trace the walls of the Acropolis stretching for a considerable extent over two 
rugged hills, which rise to the northeast of the theatre. The style and massive- 
ness of this postern afford clear evidence of the great antiquity and local impor- 
tance of Thoricus." 

Referring to this noteworthy gate, J. Fergusson states, in his " His- 
tory of Architecture" (1876), i. 215, that "the gateway of Thoricus 
shows the simplest and earliest form " of this kind of Pelasgic structure. 
Subsequent travellers — Fiedler, " Reise durch Griechenland " 
(1841), p. 41; Vischer, " Erinnerungen aus Griechenland" (1856), p. 
67 — also refer to the ancient remains at Thorikos ; while Bursian, 
" Geographie von Griechenland " (1862), i. 353, gives another outline, 
drawn by himself on the spot, of the cavea (auditorium) of the theatre, 
and speaks of that structure as unique, on account of its odd shape — 
" barocke Forme." Finally, at a meeting of the Archaeological Society 
of Berlin, in January, 1878, 

" Herr Peltz spoke of the antiquities to be seen at Thoricus, submitting a 
sketch of the theatre, the diameter of which was 54 metres. He explained its 
remarkably irregular outline, and referred to the peculiar construction of the out- 
side wall surrounding the tiers of seats— a construction which also occurs in a 
square tower on the plain, and which leads to the conclusion that these struc- 
tures belong to a very high antiquity. The seats, of which only a few traces are 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 611 

preserved, follow the natural slope of the hill. Nothing remains of the stage 
structure. In the neighborhood of the theatre are scanty remains of an 
apparently later marble building, consisting of one corner of the foundation and 
four roughly dressed drums without flutings, 82 centimetres in diameter." 

It will thus be seen that there were indications in abundance to 
guide the American excavators in this their first venture. Moreover, 
the remains visible above ground left no doubt as to the exact position 
of most of the ancient structures at Thorikos. The venture, which 
promised to solve some important archaeological questions, had the 
approval of Prof. "W. Ddrpfeld, the Director of the German School at 
Athens ; and permission to excavate was readily granted by the Greek 
Government The work was begun under Prof. Fr. D. Allen on April 
13 and continued for a week. It was resumed on May 5 and carried on 
till June 2 under Mr. Walter Miller. It was again taken up in No- 
vember and completed early in December under Mr. ^m, L. Cushing. 
The preliminary and supplementary reports of the latter two scholars, 
enriched with plans and illustrations, are inserted in the fourth volume 
of the " Papers." The general aspect of the locality, immediately be- 
fore the excavation, is graphically described by Mr. Cushing : — 

" As one approaches the theatre from Laurium, the spot is seen, at some dis- 
tance up the valley on the left, where, in the early part of this century, the British 
Society of Dilettanti excavated a Doric stoa. Here, half buried in alluvium, are 
numerous unfinished drums. . . . Not far from the stoa. on two low foot-hills, 
rude remains of an ancient civilization are visible — roughly hewn stone blocks, 
and traces of a circular wall of upright slabs. Directly from the plain, at this 
point, rises on the northeast a conical hill, the west slope of which is covered with 
a confusion of walls, mostly of rude and weak construction. The southern 
slope is thickly strewn with chips of white marble, which partly hide numerous 
graves and a plain sarcophagus. In this desolate field, at the lower edge of the 
hillside, stand the well-built walls of a theatre and of the watch-tower." 

It was to this last-mentioned point that the American explorers 
directed their efforts. We have already seen that the theatre of Thor- 
ikos, though poor in appearance, had attracted the attention of all 
scholarly travellers by reason of the peculiar formation of its cavea. 
They had all noticed that it was not in the shape of a horseshoe, or 
semicircle, usual in Greek theatres, but in what may be most accu- 
rately described as the form of a sickle. Xo one, however, could offer 
any satisfactory explanation. Wordsworth (1. c, p. 210, n.) refers, with 
some hesitation, to two plates (55 and 56) in A. L. Millin's u Peinture3 
de Yases Antiques ; ' (Paris, 1810), which are reproduced, for a similar 
purpose, in the notes (voL ii 86) of the architect Wm. Kinnard to his 



612 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

edition (1825) of Stuart and Eevett's " Antiquities of Athens." These 
two vase-paintings, which represent portions of the theatre of Bacchus 
at Athens in its early state, certainly present some similarity with the 
irregular lines of the Thorikos theatre ; but they are rather the result 
of a faulty perspective on the part of the vase-painter than a true 
rendering of the aspect of the early Athenian cavea. No purpose 
could have been served by preferring an irregular form ; and the 
only other supposition advanced was that the unsymmetrical curve 
at Thorikos was imposed by the natural configuration of the ground. 

It was this problem that the American School was called upon to 
solve. The choice they made for their first venture in excavations 
was, therefore, in the interests of science, a happy one. The history of 
the Greek stage is not yet entirely elucidated and the recent discovery 
of the theatre at Epidauros rekindled the discussion as to the architec- 
tural economy of Greek theatres. It was thus a matter of great impor- 
tance to ascertain the original arrangements in such structures as had 
not undergone modification during Eoman times ; and there was every 
reason to expect that the theatre of Thorikos answered to this desidera- 
tum. The " rude remnants of an ancient civilization " noticed by Mr. 
Cushing in its immediate vicinity, the undoubted Pelasgic gate already 
referred to, the style of the masonry of portions of the other struc- 
tures, — all spoke of the great antiquity of the place. 

Bat another characteristic feature of Greek architecture was at 
once observable. The unerring judgment and unrivalled taste of the 
Greeks in choosing the most appropriate and most attractive sites for 
their public buildings is exemplified even in this comparatively poor 
locality. The cone-like hill, some 146 metres high, which rises above 
the ancient town, forms two spurs, between which the theatre was 
imbedded; and the seats covering the slopes commanded the most 
exquisite view of the plain below, the island of Helena lying at the 
feet of the spectators, <aad Kythnos, Keos, and Seriphos dotting the 
blue sea beyond. In other respects, however, no effort^ had been 
made at architectural display or decoration. The opportunities offered 
by the natural configuration of the hillsides were taken advantage of 
in the simplest manner ; and in this lay the solution of the problem 
which had puzzled archaeologists. The American excavators had 
hardly unearthed some of the rows of seats when it became manifest 
that the locality itself offered no insurmountable difficulty to the adop- 
tion, as the form of the cavea, of the segment of a circle normal in 
Greek theatres. It is true that the insufficient inclination of the 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 613 

ground necessitated the construction of a massive retaining wall for 
the farthest rows of seats ; but there was no reason why the ends of 
this wall were not rounded, other than a desire to save the labor and 
material which would have been expended in correcting the natural 
irregularities of the hillside on which the seats were ranged. No 
effort had been made to form an accurate semicircle ; only a rough 
kind of symmetry, answering to practical requirements, was aimed at ; 
and therefore the curve of the cavea was not that of a semicircle, but 
of an irregular ellipsis. 

This view was amply confirmed by the general character, work- 
manship, and architectural arrangements of the structure, which all 
spoke of the restrained needs and poor resources of the small and rural 
community whom it was destined to serve. The seats, which have no 
stone facings, are covered with more or less rough slabs hewn from the 
adjoining rock ; a rude, low wall divides the cavea from the orchestra ; 
and this consists of a simple floor of baked earth. Moreover, in 
marked contrast to the vast seating capacity of most Greek theatres, - 
not more than five thousand spectators could be here accommodated. 
The theatres of Argos and Chaeronea only are smaller. Originally the 
auditorium was even more circumscribed, as an old inner retaining wall 
testifies. Parallel to this, and at a distance of 18 metres farther out, 
another and a much more substantially constructed wall was raised at 
some later time, — when the increase of the population demanded it, — 
the intervening space being filled in, and new tiers of seats carried up 
at the same inclination as the old. 

Another peculiarity of this theatre was found to be the entire ab- 
sence of a stage. Beyond a straight wall, which rises sixteen feet 
from the lower slope of the hill and retains the levelled mass of 
earth forming the platform of the orchestra, in front of the sloping 
tiers of seats, there is absolutely no trace of any structure answering 
to the stage observable in other Greek theatres. This peculiarity 
seems to confirm Prof. Dorpfeld's theory that prior to the time of 
Ly curgus, the orator (circ. 340 B.C.), there existed no stage, but that 
the orchestra was a complete circle, on which theatrical representa- 
tions, more in the nature of choruses and rough performances of buf- 
foons, were held. The old tradition must have survived in rural and 
poor communities, where the conventional niceties of the Greek drama 
were not observed, but both choruses and actors performed on the 
floor of the orchestra. In the Thorikos structure, therefore, we have 
an example — the only one so far discovered — of a primitive theatre, in 



614 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

its transition from a still earlier state when the spectators assembled on 
the bare slope of a hillside to look down upon the performances and 
dances carried on on a levelled piece of ground in front of them. 

On the eastern flank of the orchestra, a chamber fifty feet long, 
with sides ten feet high, was found cut in the native rock. It does 
not seem to have been in any way connected with the economy of the 
theatre ; but the work, which reminds one of similar traces on the rocks 
at Athens, shows it to be a remnant of remote antiquity. At the 
western end of the orchestra, however, a small structure was unearthed 
intimately related to the origin of the Attic drama and to the early as- 
sociations of Thorikos itself. It was found to be the ruin of a temple 
8.70 by 6.30 metres, a portion of its stylobate being cut in the rock. 
The portions of the north and west walls of the cella, which still rise 
some feet above the ground, are the most carefully finished pieces of 
masonry at Thorikos, with good joints and well-squared corners. An 
architrave, fragments of the marble cornice, some of the roofing tiles, 
and the terra-cotta antefixse show it to have been an Ionic temple in 
antis. Finally, a broken stele bearing the word dIONT2Q,I — the only 
inscription recovered during the excavations — confirms the supposi- 
tion that the temple was sacred to Dionysos ; while the form of the 
letters bears out the conjectured date of the structure. This was 
arrived at by another process of reasoning : A bronze coin of Athens 
was found in a joint of the cella wall, where it must have been de- 
posited during the building of the temple. Now, as bronze coins were 
issued at Athens for the first time under the Archon Kallias (406 B.C.), 
but were demonetized in 394, and as they were reissued in 350-322, it 
is conjectured that the temple dates from this latter epoch. 

The outer wall of the theatre, as well as the massive square tower 
near it, is in a style of masonry transitional from the polygonal to the 
quadrilateral — a style which cannot be strictly confined to any one 
period. As, however, they are very similar in construction to the 
walls of (Eniadse in Akarnania, — known to have been fortified by 
Philip, — with the restorations of Orchomenos in Bceotia, made by 
Philip and Alexander, and with the structures of Epaminondas at 
Messene and Eleutherse, the inference is that the enlargement of the 
theatre took place in the early Macedonian period ; whereas the inner 
wall, marking the original dimensions, is assignable to the latter half of 
the fifth century, and portions of the structure to a still more remote time. 

Only a few unimportant pieces of pottery, a lion's claw and a life- 
size thumb in Pentelic marble, were found in the course of these exca- 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 615 

vations, which were unfortunately left incomplete. Portions of the 
orchestra and three or four of the lower tiers of seats were alone cleared 
of earth. Some tentative search was made in the immediate vicinity ; 
but the site was not systematically explored nor was it nearly exhausted. 
We shall see farther on that a similar error was committed in other in- 
stances, — an error which, when not imposed by lack of funds or occa- 
sioned by inexperience, is on all counts regrettable. Such incomplete 
explorations are not fruitful, either in personal kudos or in scientific 
reliability. This was exemplified in the case of Dr. Schliemann, when 
subsequent and more thorough examinations of sites which he thought 
he had exhausted, entirely upset the cherished theories he had founded 
upon insufficient data. 

Thorikos presented a similar example. As we have seen above, 
Mr. Cushing had noticed, " not far from the stoa, on two low foot-hills, 
rude remains of an ancient civilization — roughly hewn stone blocks 
and traces of a circular wall of upright slabs." Such indications were 
sufficient to fix the attention of experienced archaeologists. Conse- 
quently the Ephoria, or Directorate, of the Greek Archaeological De- 
partment decided to investigate the site thoroughly ; and excavations 
were ordered in December, 1890, and continued in 1893-94 under Dr. 
Staes. On the eastern declivity of the conical hill now called Vela- 
touri (possibly a Greek adaptation of the Italian " Bellatore "), on the 
south slope of which stands the theatre, two prehistoric tombs, situated 
250 metres apart, were successively opened. The position of the one 
farthest down the hill was well known, it having been exposed ap- 
parently to repeated attempts at violation, from the Eoman times on- 
ward. The earlier riflings of tombs are determinable by the fact that 
their object was, not antiquarian finds, but precious objects in gold 
and silver. And such prehistoric royal tombs were rich in these ob- 
jects. To this fact may be traced the name of " Treasuries " under 
which these structures were traditionally known. Where terra-cotta 
figurines and vases are still left in them, the pillage is traceable to 
Homan or Byzantine times. Now these " bee-hive " tombs — so called 
from their inward conformation — were exposed to view, because they 
were generally covered by a mound of earth ; and, though of massive 
construction, were easily assailable. The dome-like part of the roof, 
which usually projects from the ground, was broken in, and access to 
the interior was obtained by a ladder. By the subsequent accumulation 
of earth, the tomb filled up ; and a fresh exploration became a matter 
so laborious as to deter the latter-day professional poachers of antiques. 



616 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

The tomb just referred to was noticeable for its peculiar formation. 
It is not circular but elliptic in shape ; and its apex is not a conical 
dome, but more like a pack-saddle. It is approached bj the usual 
dromos, or entrance, abutting in a great gate 2£ metres high and 1£ 
metres broad, which is closed in by massive slabs. In this tomb, only 
fragments of Mykenaean pottery and a few leaves of gold were found. 
The other tomb, however, of the normal circular shape, situated farther 
tip the slope, yielded a richer harvest Having been entirely covered 
by the soil crumbling down the hill, it remained unknown until its 
walls were discovered in the course of these excavations. It is of 
majestic dimensions, 10 metres in diameter and 8 metres high, inde- 
pendently of the conical superstructure, which had fallen in. A dozen 
men had to be employed for a fortnight, before it was cleared of the 
earth and the huge stone blocks which encumbered it. It is approached 
by a dromos 12 metres in length, and a doorway 3£ metres high, through 
which a large carriage might easily be driven. Within the circular area 
are three graves cut in the rock of the floor, covered with large stone- 
slabs ; while on each side of the door two other graves are built up, one 
of them obliquely over one of the underlying slabs. Such super- 
incumbent tombs were now for the first time met with in a " bee-hive " 
structure, and, though of the Mykenaean epoch, were apparently later 
modes of prehistoric burial. 

All these graves, with one exception, had already been rifled. En- 
trance had been effected as usual through the ruined dome, the doorway 
having been found still blocked with the three original slabs in situ. 
The ransacking must have been somewhat hurried, or the_boo.ty enor- 
mous ; for, besides the terra-cotta vessels, several objects of value had 
been left behind, including a gold finger-ring, two fibulae (brooches), — 
one formed of two gold wings and the other of amber, — jasper beads, 
and a quantity of gold myrtle and laurel leaves. Also a beautifully 
worked comb, a needle, and a quiver in ivory; a bronze mirror; two 
stone arrows of very fine workmanship. Certain leaden disks found in 
these tombs and decorated with concentric rings in colors are believed 
to be money ; while a marble vase, filled with fragments of early poetry 
and the bones of animals, is supposed to contain the remains of the 
funeral repast The untouched grave in the rock was next opened ; 
but strangely enough it contained no funereal offerings. A man's 
skeleton, however, was found in perfect condition, and is now exhibited 
in the Central Museum at Athens as an extremely rare instance of 
such preservation of human remains of that very early time. 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 6 IT 

Some thirty metres higher up the hills, the foundations of an im- 
portant building were unearthed, resting on the bed-rock and supposed 
to hare been the palace dominating an entire city, which was gradually 
discovered in the immediate vicinity and which seems to have been 
buried by some convulsion of nature in prehistoric times. It appears 
to have been not Hellenic, but Mykensean in character, judging from 
the fragments of pottery of the Hissarlik type. Such are briefly the 
results obtained by the excavations continued subsequent to the Amer- 
ican exploration of Thorikos. They all go to confirm the great an- 
tiquity and importance of that site. 

The activity of the American School, however, was not to remain 
long in abeyance. In the autumn of the same year, 1886, the Ephor- 
General of Antiquities offered to the School the privilege of excavating 
the theatre of Sicyon. The site was visited toward the end of Febru- 
ary, 1887, by Prof. M. L. D'Ooge, accompanied by the Directors of 
the British and German Schools, Mr. Penrose and Dr. Dorpfeld, and 
work was begun on March 23, continuing, under Mr. W. J. McMurtry, 
up to May 10. It was resumed on December 5 and brought to a close 
in January, 1888, under the supervision of Mr. M. L. Earle ; the late 
Prof. A. C. Merriam being at that time Director of the School. The 
reports of these excavations, drawn up by Messrs. McMurtry and Earle, 
are included in the fifth volume of the "Papers." 

Sicyon, one of the earliest known cities in Greece, appears also 
under the name of ^Egialeia (or iEgiali), indicative of its primacy on 
that coast ; of Telchinia, pointing to its early proficiency in metal-work ; 
:ont. and of Mecon, a name explained by the abundance and luxuriance with 
which the wild poppies, undisturbed by the mighty changes which 
have swept over the old site, continue to flourish to this day, clothing 
it each successive spring with a fresh robe of scarlet. Hesiod 
(" Theogony," 536) places here a contest between gods and men. But 
the^name Sicyon, first mentioned in Homer ("Iliad," ii. 572), is con- 
nected with the Ionian origin of its inhabitants, who later succumbed 
to the Dorian conquerors of the Peloponnesus. Under successive 
families of Despots, the city attained to a high pitch of prosperity. It 
erected treasuries of its own at Olympia and Delphi, and its coins, dis- 
tinguished by the device of a flying dove, were current throughout 
Greece. After participating in the political vicissitudes of the other 
Greek states, Sicyon had lost much of its former importance, when, in 
303 B.C., Demetrios Polyorketes prevailed upon its inhabitants to aban- 
don the scattered lower town, extending to the sea, and to gather on the 



618 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

ancient Acropolis, which included arable lands and was well supplied 
with water. On the destruction of its rival, Corinth, by the Komans 
in 146 B.C., Sicyon secured the administration of the Isthmian games. 
Its renascent prosperity, however, proved short-lived. The Komans de- 
nuded it of its most valuable works of art, including its famous paint- 
ings ; and what they spared was destroyed, with, the greater part of the 
city, by a violent earthquake in the reign of Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138- 
160). When Pausanias visited Sicyon shortly afterward, he found 
it almost depopulated. In that condition it must have lingered on 
to the sixth century of our era, at which time it is referred to as 
New Sicyon ; probably so named ever since the concentration of 
Demetrius, the port being apparently the old town. Indeed Pausanias 
speaks of the lower city as the original .^Egialeia, In Suidas (tenth 
century) the Byzantine appellation of Sicyon is given as Hellas, evi- 
dently in contradistinction to the numerous Slavonic settlements which 
had peopled the surrounding country. An insignificant village now 
occupies the northern extremity of the once famous Acropolis ; and its 
modern name, Yasilika, the Royal, speaks of its abiding Greek tradi- 
tions and of the imposing aspect of the surrounding remains of theatre 
and temples. 

In point of fact Sicyon was at all times famous more as a centre of 
art than of political activity. The surpassing beauty of its site, its 
poetic associations, the mixture of Ionic and Doric blood in its inhabi- 
tants, — all contributed to endow it with artistic taste and talent Tra- 
dition, therefore, made of Sicyon the birthplace of the art of painting, 
of which it certainly long remained the home (" diu ilia fuit patria 
picturse." Pliny, " Natural History," xxxv. 11, 40). The Sicyonian 
school of painting, founded by Eupompos, produced Pamphilos and 
Apelles. Butades, a Sicyonian, is said to have been the first to make 
images in clay; and the art of the statuary, introduced toward the 
middle of the sixth century from Crete, culminated here in the master- 
pieces of Lysippos. The Sicyonians were also famous for their great 
taste in making articles of dress,— notably a special kind of shoe. 

To this day one cannot visit the site without being inspired and 
captivated by its grandeur and beauty. Situated some two miles in- 
land, the plateau, on which the Acropolis stood, looks down upon a 
succession of terraces planted with vineyards, and sloping toward the 
blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth. Beyond, to the north, on the op- 
posite coast, rise the purple-colored Parnassus, the lofty Cithseron, and 
Helicon with all its noble associations. To the east Acrocorinthos 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 619 

rears its rugged head ; while to the west stretches an undulating plain, 
proverbial for its richness. The plateau of Sicyon forms an irregular 
triangle, three miles in circumference at its eminence and of great 
natural strength. It is precipitous on all sides, and accessible from the 
plain only by two narrow passes. The hill is skirted at its foot by the 
Asopos on the east, and by the Helisson on the west ; both rivers flow- 
ing toward the Grulf. The plateau itself is broken by a rocky ledge 
into an upper level, which stands in the rear, to the south, and forms 
about a fourth of the whole area : on this the new Acropolis of Deme- 
trius was built. The lower level comprises fertile lands sufficient for 
the support of a considerable population. It was the site of the lower 
town ; while a third section of the entire city was the maritime quarter 
on the coast. During the flourishing epoch the three settlements ap- 
pear to have been connected by walls extending from the Acropolis to 
the sea. Of the upper city walls, built on the very edge of the hill, 
extensive remains may still be seen. 

The description of Pausanias, — who refers to no less than fifteen 
temples, some of which were then already in ruins, — though in many 
respects detailed, does not assist much in determining the precise loca- 
tion of the various buildings he enumerates. An exception to this is 
the theatre, unmistakable remains of which were at all times visible. It 
is situated between the upper and lower level and is partly cut out of 
the ledge of rocks that separates the two. The auditorium, facing to 
the northeast, commands the magnificent view already described, — 
scenery which no modern scene-painter's brush can rival. Leake 
(" Travels in the Morea," iii. 357-70) computed the diameter of this 
theatre at 400 ft. ; that of its orchestra at 100 ft. ; and the length of the 
proscenium, the foundations of which he traced cut in the rock, at 
75 ft. He thought there must have been forty rows of seats, in three 
divisions, separated by two diazomata. On the upper level of the 
plateau, the only remarkable feature, beyond the remains of certain 
foundations, is a very complete system of aqueducts, deeply cut in the 
rock and extending to the lower level. Here, however, may be traced, 
by the lines of stones still standing, the streets, which, in conformity 
with the rules of Yitruvius, run with precision from northeast to 
southwest, and from northwest to southeast. Not far from the theatre, 
to the northeast, brick walls, some 8 ft. high, mark the site of a Eo- 
man building, believed to have been a bath. To the west are the re- 
mains of the stadion, in the construction of which the declivity between 
the two levels was again turned to advantage. Some architectural frag- 



620 MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE, 

ments are imbedded in the walls of the village church, and in it is still 
preserved the fine Corinthian capital noticed by Blouet in 1828. 

Such was the condition of the site immediately prior to the Ameri- 
can exploration; and it is roughly so described by earlier visitors — 
Spon, Pococke, Foucherot and Fauvel, by Pongueville, who thought 
("Voyage dans la Grrece," iv. 10) he had identified the temples of the 
Dioscuri and of Fortuna Acrsea, and by Leake, who gives a good plan 
of the locality. It is also referred to by L. Boss (" Eeisen in Pelopon," 
39), Ernst Curtius (" Peloponesos," ii 482-501), Beule (" fitudes sur le 
PeloponCse,"' 343) and Bursian (ii. 23-32). In common with their 
predecessors and immediate followers, the French savants of the Ex- 
pedition Scientifique de ty Moree, who visited Sicyon in 1828, did not at- 
tempt any excavations; but they measured and illustrated in three 
plates (81-83, vol. iii) the remains visible above ground. The site was 
therefore practically a virgin one when the Americans first undertook it 

Their object was to discover the complete plan of the theatre, — one 
of the largest in Greece, — so as to render possible the accurate study 
of its structure and disposition. The declivity on which the auditorium 
is almost entirely excavated had enveloped the ruin in a shroud of 
earth, increasing in depth from one metre in front, to three metres in the 
rear. The deposit on the orchestra was even heavier. Some of the 
earlier travellers consequently believed that almost all the rows of 
seats had disappeared. The theatre of Sicyon, however, like that at 
Epidauros, was found to be preserved comparatively unimpaired. The 
successive accumulations of earth had, fortunately, served as a protec- 
tion provided by nature against the devastations of man. On the other 
hand, they rendered the work of the explorers less satisfactory, by re- 
stricting the first excavations to such parts of the structure as were in- 
dispensable to the elucidation of the plan of stage and orchestra. Of the 
rows of seats, the lower tiers alone were laid bare, and these only half- 
way round the orchestra. The two front rows were found to consist, as 
usual, of seats of honor, made of porous stone, many of them elaborate 
in execution, each having a back and arms. Five other rows are cut 
in the rock. Fourteen stairways, extending upward, divide the audi- 
torium into thirteen kerkides, or wedge-shaped divisions. An elaborate 
drainage system forms a prominent feature of this theatre. The precise 
purpose of an imposing aqueduct, running under the orchestra and com- 
municating with a line of earthen pipes under the stage, was not defi- 
nitely settled until a third and a fourth exploration were undertaken, 
as we shall presently see. But the surface drainage was found to re- 



MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 621 

semble closely the arrangement observable in the theatre at Athens. 
A deep stone trench runs round at the foot of the front row of seats, is 
bridged over by slabs opposite the stairways, and forms the boundary 
of the orchestra, which is here of an elliptical form. The floor is 
plastered over, as at Epidauros ; as are the floor and walls of a chamber 
discovered in the rear of the stage, and supposed to have been a bath. 
Three main walls, forming the foundations of the stage, were unearthed; 
the one nearest the orchestra being 72 ft. in length and 3 ft. high. It 
is pierced by three doors, and stands on an ornamental border which 
extends the whole length. The marble blocks forming this border bear 
on the sides Greek letters, which manifestly served as masons' marks. 
The letters are of the ancient Attic alphabet ; but the superstructure 
is Roman in character. As, however, some of the blocks composing it, 
as well as the side-walls, are of undoubted Hellenic workmanship, it is 
conjectured that the stage was remodelled at some later period, the date 
of the theatre itself being traceable to the fifth century. 

An important discovery, in connection with the history of archi- 
tecture, was that of two arched passages, still in excellent preservation, 
which served as entrance and exit to and from the higher rows of seats. 
They are built without a trace of mortar or brick, and correspond to the 
masonry of the Hellenic walls just mentioned. They are, therefore, in- 
disputable Greek work ; and, when considered together with a similar 
instance ascertained in the Bouleutirion (Senate House) of Olympia, 
they establish beyond doubt the fact that the arch was not a Roman 
invention, imported into Greece, but was originally used by the Greeks 
themselves, though only, as it would appear, in underground structures. 
Traces of a colonnade, adorning the front of the theatre, were also found. 
At this point the exploration of the theatre was discontinued for a time. 

Beyond the theatre some search was made near the scattered re- 
mains of foundations, in the hope that inscriptions or other indications 
might determine the locality of some of the edifices mentioned by Pau- 
sanias. Nothing however was traced except a floor paved with black 
and white marble ; a part, apparently, of an elaborate structure. Some 
ancient tombs, observed on the slope of the plateau and elsewhere, were 
uncovered ; but it was soon evident that they had already been rifled. 
Among minor finds were three inscriptions of the classic, Roman, and 
Alexandrian times (published in the "Reports" of the excavations), 
some Sicyonian coins, and a few unimportant sculptured fragments. 
A beautiful female head was found in the possession of a peasant 

But the most valuable addition to ancient art was the discovery, 



622 MODERN ARCHEOLOGY : RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

on December 10, of the head of a youth of very great beauty. It was 
at once sent to the Central Museum at Athens, as was also a male 
torso of white marble, unearthed, at a considerable distance in the or- 
chestra, thirteen days later. When Mr. Earle returned to Athens, the 
Ephor, in his presence, placed on the torso the previously discovered 
head ; and although a fragment on the left side of the throat was miss- 
ing, the remaining portion of the two surfaces fitted so exactly, that 
the two sections formed beyond question one and the same statue. It 
represents a youthful male figure quite nude, except at the left arm, 
which is covered by a garment from the shoulder to the hip. Though 
not of the finest art, it is of excellent workmanship and of a good 
period ; the pose of the head and the expression of the face being es- 
pecially beautiful. It was at first believed to represent Dionysos ; but, 
in his exhaustive account of the statue, Mr. Earle is inclined to consider 
it an Apollo. It may be merely an idealized portrait-statue. Though 
this point can never be decided with certainty, the statue is valuable as 
one of the few undoubted remains of the famous Sicyonian School 

For four years after the first two campaigns, the further exploration 
of the theatre of Sicyon was postponed. Both the material clearance of 
the structure remained incomplete, and the scientific elucidation of im- 
portant points unattempted. But the excavation of the theatre at 
Eretria, which the American School had meanwhile taken in hand, 
raised a lively discussion in regard to an underground passage there 
discovered ; and, as a similar feature had been observed at Sicyon, it 
was now determined to prosecute the enquiry at the latter place. It 
was the late Prof. Merriam who urged the duty of solving the 
problem of this subterranean structure ; and Dr. Waldstein, the then 
Director of the School, having obtained fresh authority from the Greek 
Government, Mr. Earle, who had superintended the work during the 
first two seasons at Sicyon, conducted a third exploration, extending 
from July 27 to August 4, 1891. 

We have seen above that what was at first believed to be a great 
aqueduct was noticed running from under the centre of the orchestra, 
in the middle line of the theatre, to under the stage-structure. It was 
clearly connected with the surface drainage, and without doubt it 
carried the rain-water beyond the stage through a line of earthen 
pipes; but it remained uncertain whether it served as reservoir, as 
drain, or for some other purpose. On proceeding now to clear out the 
two ends of the structure, Mr. Earle discovered that it abutted, under 
the centre of the orchestra, in a square tank-like opening, connected 



MODERN ARCHEOLOGY: RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 623 

by side-gullies with the rain-water conduits. At the stage end five 
steps gave access from this passage to the interior of the stage ; while 
beyond the stage-building it communicated, by a narrower tunnel cut 
in the rock, with one of the old waterways of the plateau. Mr. Earle's 
investigations, however, having been interfered with by ill-health, led 
to no conclusion ; and the matter remained as much a mystery as ever. 

The task of solving the problem was consequently entrusted to 
Messrs. Carleton L. Brownson and Clarence H. Young ; and they con- 
tinued the operations from December 23 to December 30, 1891. Mr. 
Brownson, who had gained valuable experience from the similar under- 
ground passage at Eretria, proceeded in a thorough and methodical 
manner to determine the meaning and purpose of the one at Sicyon. 
He uncovered it in its whole extent by removing the overlying slabs, and 
cleared it of the accumulated earth to the virgin soil. It thus became 
manifest that the hyponomos, as it was styled, was intended to carry 
oh* more rapidly the sudden and heavy rain-fall which poured down 
the auditorium into the circular conduit at the foot of the seats. 
The tank also received the surface drainage of the orchestra. But that 
was not its only purpose: the tank was mainly intended for stage 
effects on the orchestra, and was connected with the stage by the hypo- 
nomos, which served as a concealed passage-way for the actors. The 
greater dimensions and the more careful stone facing and flooring of 
the portion of the passage between the stage and the tank, as well as 
the steps which led from the interior of the passage into the stage- 
building, prove to demonstration that it was constructed with a view 
to such use. In treating of the excavations at Eretria we shall see that 
certain statements of Greek authors confirm this explanation. 

But another interesting problem remained to be solved. Led by 
certain indications, Mr. Earle removed a portion of the later Eoman 
wall on the stage-building and laid bare a row of porous stones in which 
a series of alternate large and small holes was worked at regular inter- 
vals. On visiting Sicyon, Dr. Dorpfeld had expressed the opinion that 
these holes served to secure the wooden pinakes or columns of the early 
Greek stage. Similar indications had been observed in the theatre of 
Megalopolis ; and the researches of Messrs. Brownson and Young now 
fully confirmed that opinion. 

After their first and second campaigns at Sicyon the members of 
the American School proceeded further afield in their Greek explora- 
tions. In my next article, I shall trace their footsteps onward. 

J. GrENNADIUS. 



REPRINTED FROM 

4 'The Forum" 

FOR MARCH, 1897 



American Excavations in Greece: 
Ikaria, Anthedon, Thisbe 



By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1896, by the Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to republish articles is reserved. 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE.— II 

The discoveries of the theatres of Assos, Thorikos, and Sicyon, as 
set forth in the preceding article, supplied valuable data for the eluci- 
dation of several unsolved questions relating to the theatre of the 
Greeks. And as the origin of the Greek drama is closely bound up 
with the worship of Dionysos, it was a judicious choice which de- 
termined the next venture of the American School. For Ikaria was 
reputed to have been the first abode in Attica of the god Dionysos, the 
birthplace of Thespis, and the original home of Greek drama. 

As in the case of other ancient demes of Attica, the precise locality 
of Ikaria had long been the subject of controversy among geographers 
and travellers in Greece. These conjectures and arguments, quoted by 
the late Prof. Merriam at length, are typical of antiquarian controver- 
sies based upon mere theory and assumption ; but they are usually 
disposed of in the end by demonstrations which are as simple as they 
are indisputable. 

In the spring of 1887, Prof. MilchhofTer undertook an exploring 
journey through Attica, preparative of the text accompanying the 
monumental " Karten von Attika " of the German staff. In his search 
for inscriptions of topographical interest, he found rich materials im- 
bedded in the walls of ruined chapels, built up of ancient fragments. 
He thus succeeded in determining with certainty the locality of several 
ancient demes. On May 9, returning from Marathon to Kephisia, he 
took the unusual route by the valley of Rapedosa along the north- 
eastern declivity of Mount Pentelicus, and soon found himself in one of 
the most lovely and secluded spots in Attica. Here, in a thick wood, 
is a spot known to this day as "Dionysos" ; and in a grove of pines 
and ivy, such as the service of the god would have demanded, are the 
ruins of a small, but remarkable, Byzantine church. Some fragments 
of beautifully ornamented Byzantine slabs show that a still earlier and 
probably larger church stood here. The tolerably well preserved walls 
of the ruin, about six feet high, are built almost entirely of large blocks 
of Pentelic marble, evidently taken from an ancient structure, and in- 
clude the jambs and supports of doors. Other fragments are strewn 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

about To form the apse of the church a semicircular choragic monu- 
ment had been utilized, the architrave of which, apparently discarded 
in the process, and lying near, bore an inscription which has been 
published by Chandler. Among the ruins Milchhoffer now discovered 
another inscription, infinitely more important, since it recorded a dedi- 
cation to Diouysos by " Kephisos, son of Timarchos of Ikaria." This, 
coupled with the modern name of the place, left no doubt in his mind 
that he had hit upon the much-debated locality of Ikaria; and he 
announced his discovery in the " Berliner philologische Wochenschrift " 
of June 18, 1887. 

A hundred and twenty years earlier, Chandler, while journeying 
from Athens to Marathon, had been attracted to this very spot by in- 
formation as to the existence of the above-mentioned inscription ; and 
he then wrote : — 

" We penetrated into a lonely recess and came to a small ruined church of 
St. Dionysius, standing on the marble heap of a trophy or monument, erected 
for some victory obtained by three persons named JEnias, Xanthippus, and Xan- 
thicles. The inscription is on a long stone lying near." (" Travels in Greece," 
p. 160.) 

Chandler, nevertheless, did not suspect how narrowly he had missed 
the elucidation of oue of the most contested points in Attic topography. 
Some eight years before Chandler, Stuart had drawn up, while in Athens, 
a list of " Modern names of towns, villages, monasteries, and farms, with 
their ancient names," which he prefixed to the third volume of his 
" Antiquities of Athens." In it he writes : " Dionys (modern) = Dio- 
nysia (ancient), between Stamati and Cephisia. A metoche [pendant] of 
Cyriani [sic, i e., Kaesariane'] on the foot of Pentelicus near Stamati." 
He further quotes a passage from Suidas anent the Athenian festival 
of Dionysia, which Stuart evidently associated in his mind with the 
name of the place. But he also did not suspect its identity with 
ancient Ikaria ; for the spot is not marked on his map. It figures for 
the first time on the map of Greece published by the French staff shortly 
after the establishment of the kingdom ; and to this fact F. Lenormant 
refers (" Eecherches archeol. a Eleusis," 1862, p. 243) when he goes 
on to say that, on the road from Kapedosa to Stamata, 

" one meets the ruins of a small mediaeval monastery to which the peasants of 
the mountain give to this day the name of ' Dionyso.' This monastery, which is 
mentioned by none of the learned who have treated of the geography of Attica, 
is shown only on the fine map of the French staff. The name it has preserved to 
the present time is undoubtedly connected with the ancient tradition which re- 
corded the sojourn of Bacchus in that district." 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Lenormant, who also did not dream how near Ikaria he had been, 
does not mention the fact, — apparently known to few archaeologists, 
although of great service in the identification of classic localities, — 
that in Greece churches erected on the sites of ancient temples were 
almost invariably dedicated to the saint whose attributes in Christian 
hagiography corresponded to the character of the divinity the worship 
of which Christianity had there supplanted, or whose name recalled 
that of the heathen god there formerly honored. In the present case, 
as Chandler clearly states, the small ruined church was dedicated to 
St. Dionysius, the Areopagite. 

The summer resort of Kephisia, on the western extremity of Mount 
Pentelicus, is forty -five minutes by rail from Athens. Thence a stiff 
walk of an hour, through groves of pines and masses of arbutus and 
oleander, brings the traveller in view of the snow-clad Dirphys and the 
chain of mountains beyond — a continuous sweep of alpine grandeur 
that makes one forget all weariness of body in the exaltation of the 
moment. After a further walk of more than an hour one enters the 
" lonely recess," shaded by majestic plane-trees, which thrive on the 
perennial stream that flows in the glen close by. " The scenery," adds 
Prof. Merriam, "is in harmony with the twofold side of the worship 
of Bionysos, the gay and joyous, the sad and mournful, and is aptly 
fitted to inspire a Susarion and a Thespis. The spot is full of Theoc- 
ritean dignity and simplicity." The region thus described is some 
twelve hundred feet above the sea ; and, although the vine is not now 
cultivated there, the careful terracing of the ground below points to the 
existence in days gone by of a widespread viniculture, with which the 
cult of Dionysos and the legend of Ikarios are intimately connected. 

Put in a faw words, this legend personifies the heroic type of the 
Athenian farmer in Ikaria, who is visited by the god and is taught 
the culture of the vine and the art of wine-making. Ikarios then offers 
to Dionysos a goat that had injured the vine ; and his inflated skin is 
tossed about in the sports and dances which the joys of wine-drinking 
provoke. Travelling through the country, Ikarios next proclaims the 
new cult, and offers far and wide the unmixed gift of the god. But the 
friends of the shepherds who had drunk themselves into a stupor, 
thinking Ikarios had poisoned them, kill him, only to lament the crime 
when the supposed victims begin to grow sober. Erigone, the daugh- 
ter of Ikarios, overpowered with grief at her father's death, hangs her- 
self by his tomb. Ikarios is now revered as the eponymous hero and 
mythical king of the township, the mournful dirge of the "Linos" 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

being chanted in his honor ; while the woes of Erigone are recited in a 
deeply plaintive song called " Aletis." Thus, the rural festival of the 
Dionysia, held yearly on the completion of the vintage, is instituted. 
The rough dances and mummeries gradually ripen into plays enacted 
by buffoons ; and Ikaria becomes celebrated for her choruses and 
choreographic representations. Attracted here from Megara, Susarion 
upraised these rude performances by an infusion of the comic talent of 
the Megarians, and thus created comedy ; while Thespis, a native of 
Ikaria, inspired by the mournful side of the legend, elaborated the 
tragic form of the drama. This origin of the two great branches of 
dramatic art is indicated in the words of Athenaeus (iL 40): "From 
strong-drinking came the invention of tragedy and comedy in the Attic 
Ikaria at the very time of vintage." Thenceforward Thespis was hon- 
ored as the father of the Attic theatre; and dramatic art, the great 
invention of the Ikarians, — being the outgrowth of their worship of Di- 
onysos, — became part of the service paid to the god throughout Greece. 
In Athens, especially, the great Dionysia were celebrated with much 
pomp ; scenes from the Ikarian legend were represented in the reliefs 
of the Dionysiac theatre ; and the priest of the god occupied there the 
seat of honor. 

This short account makes manifest the interest attaching to the site 
of Ikaria, and also the importance of ascertaining all that the spot it- 
self could reveal in connection with the early growth of the drama. It 
was an enviable task which thus fell to the lot of the American School ; 
and it was prosecuted with zeal and signal success. Never has an ex- 
ploration yielded more readily or more abundantly results of such im- 
portance, with so small an outlay of money or labor. " The work," 
we are told, " has been like the opening of a great chest of hidden and 
forgotten treasures." The site was the property of Mr. A. Heliopou- 
los, British Yice-Consul at Aivali, in Asia Minor ; permission to 
excavate was readily granted ; and on January 30, 1888, Mr. C. D. 
Buck, of Yale, taking a hammock and some provisions, established 
himself in an untenanted and the only house in the valley, and, with 
but half a dozen workmen at first, continued operations up to March 
19. The exploration was resumed on November 13, and was brought 
to a close in the second week of the following January. 

The first step was to take down the walls of the ruined church, 
which at once yielded a mass of fragments of reliefs, statues, inscrip- 
tions, architraves, and other architectural pieces. From among these 
were recovered the wall-blocks and flat roof-pieces belonging to the 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

semicircular choragic monument, referred to by Chandler, of which, 
only two courses were still standing. It was thus possible to arrive 
at an approximately accurate reconstruction of the whole, with the 
exception of the ornamentation of the roof, which possibly supported 
a tripod. The inscribed architrave, long known to exist, was found 
exactly where Chandler had seen it, the thick vegetation around having 
shielded it from harm ; and the American explorers were now enabled 
to correct Chandler's inaccurate reading of "^Enias" instead of 
" Hagnias " — the name of one of the three choregi, the patrons of the 
chorus, who had erected the monument to commemorate their triumph 
in a tragic competition held in honor of Dionysos. In size the monu- 
ment would be about two-thirds that of Lysikrates at Athens, if the 
circle were complete. 

As the clearing of the site of the church and of its immediate prox- 
imity progressed, the most complete evidence, both artistic and epi- 
graphic, accumulated ; placing beyond all doubt the location of Ikaria, 
and proving it to have remained for many centuries the centre of an 
active cult of Dionysos. Among the earliest finds were two inscrip- 
tions with decrees of the township of Ikaria, the following being a 
translation of the more important of the two : — 

" Callippos was the mover. Voted by the Ikarians to commend and to crown 
Nikon the town clerk (demarikos) ; and that the crier shall publicly proclaim 
that the Ikarians and the township of the Ikarians do crown Nikon with a crown 
of ivy, for that right well and duly he hath ordered the festival of Dionysos and 
the competition. Voted also to commend the patrons of the chorus Epikrates 
and Praxias, and to crown them with a crown of ivy, and further that the crier 
shall make the same proclamation in regard to them that was ordered for the 
town clerk." 

The orthography of this inscription indicates that the decree is not 
later than the third, and may be as early as the fourth, century B.C. 
Two other inscriptions, engraved on boundary stones, were found 
near the church : the one partaking of the character of a bill of sale ; 
the other having reference to a dowry and to a mortgage involved in 
its payment. A third contains details of the production of plays. In 
one of the dedicatory inscriptions of the fourth century occurs the name 
of the poet whose play was victorious — Nikostratos, whom we know 
as the younger son of Aristophanes. Aristophanes himself refers, in 
the " Knights," v. 519, to the many victories of the comic poet Magnes, 
who had not then (424 B.C.) been long dead. He flourished about a 
century after Thespis, and was, next to him, the most renowned of 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Ikarian dramatists. In all, some twenty inscriptions were here dis- 
covered ; many of them choragic and of the first importance. Barely, 
if ever, has a site been identified so conclusively by means of inscrip- 
tions. Ikaria, when not treated as half mythical, was for centuries 
driven from pillar to post through the length and breadth of Attica ; 
but it has now been located with greater certainty and distinctness 
than any other of the Attic rural districts. 

Besides the choragic monument, a large quantity of architectural 
remains were found, including altars, pedestals, and bases, — many of 
these in the course of trial trenches dug across the site. By this 
means were unearthed, also, the foundations of several structures the 
purpose of which is not clear. Among these, traces of a theatre, prop- 
erly so called, were not met with ; except indeed a rude wall, curved at 
the extremities and facing a row of five massive marble seats, as if 
intended to enclose an orchestra, or dancing-ground for theatrical rep- 
resentations. The slopes of the hill, rising behind the marble seats, 
which were no doubt those of the priests and magistrates, would have 
afforded excellent seating for the rural population, who thence would 
have had a good view of the orchestra, with, perhaps, a wooden stage 
erected for the occasion ; and the prospect of the plain of Marathon and 
the sea beyond supplied the sort of scenic arrangement the Greeks 
loved so dearly. No temple of Dionysos was found ; but the numer- 
ous votive offerings and inscriptions recovered, as well as the archi- 
tectural fragments of which the Byzantine church was built, leave no 
reasonable doubt that the latter replaced a demolished sanctuary of 
the god. Two of the inscriptions found — both of the fifth century — 
are of especial interest in regard to the rural worship of Dionysos. 
They speak of the money of the god, state the amount in hand, and 
make provision for the erection and repair of " the statue." 

Portions of this statue are believed to have been traced among the 
fragments of statuary found mostly within and around the church. 
Beneath the wall, to the north, part of a colossal head or mask of the 
bearded Dionysos, of the finest archaic art, was discovered ; and, deeper 
in the soil, a large fragment of the beard, as well as one of the large 
curls, each an inch and a half across, in which the hair over the fore- 
head is arranged. These curls are partly fashioned separately and 
fitted into holes, and partly cut out of the block of marble. Similar 
holes appear above the row of curls where a garland was attached ; and 
of this some bronze leaves were found. The rest of the hair, as well as 
the mustache and beard, is treated in a peculiar wavy fashion. Beneath 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

the floor of the church was next found a colossal archaic seated torso, 
preserved from neck to thigh. A socket in the neck marks the place 
where the head, presumably the one just described, was fitted in. The 
sandaled feet were next met with, imbedded in the wall to the right ; 
and, in other parts of the ruin, the right hand, a portion of the right 
leg, and a fragment of the left thigh were discovered. Between the 
thumb and first finger of the hand is a hole into which a cantharus, a 
sort of drinking cup, — picked up close by, — fitted perfectly. Curls 
and long hair stream down the back of the torso ; and four holes on 
the left breast appear to have held some bronze ornament. The type 
bears resemblance to that followed, later, by Alkamenes in his cele- 
brated statue of Dionysos. Another torso, that of a satyr, of a good 
period of art, a bust of a Pan or Silen, reliefs of a goat-sacrifice, a beau- 
tiful ivy wreath below a dedicatory inscription to Dionysos, — all found 
here, — point to the prevalence of the cult of the god at Ikaria. 

Prior to these latter finds, however, the torso of a naked male figure 
of sixth-century style, and of the so-called Apollo type, was discovered. 
It was followed by a bas-relief of a later period representing Apollo, 
with long curls, seated on a round object, painted red, presumably the 
omphalos ■, and holding a lyre, with Artemis and Leto standing behind. 
Later, amid the remains of some walls, another relief appeared. It 
again represents a seated Apollo, holding in one hand a twig and in 
the other a phiale. Artemis stands behind ; and a worshipper, heavily 
draped, approaches the altar in front of the god. The second relief 
bears a dedicatory inscription ; and both are notable by the fact that 
they are decorated on both sides. These finds indicated that, besides 
the cult of Dionysos, the Ikarians must have practised also the worship 
of Apollo Pythius, said to have been introduced to Athens from 
Marathon. This conjecture was presently confirmed by the discovery 
of a marble threshold, which bore, in letters of the fourth century, 
these words : " The Pythion of the Ikarians." This inscription, the 
more remarkable as being a unique instance of the " labelling " of a 
Greek temple, gained greatly in importance when, shortly afterwards, 
the scanty remains of the temple itself, to which it referred, were 
laid bare. 

The other sculptured remains yielded by these excavations number 
some twenty -five pieces ; including a very pretty female head and three 
sepulchral bas-reliefs in excellent preservation. But the most im- 
portant of all is an archaic stele representing, in low relief of most 
delicate and beautiful workmanship, a warrior holding a spear. At 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

first sight it appears to be an exact replica of the famous Aristion stele, 
discovered in 1839 in another part of Attica, and now treasured in the 
Central Museum ; but on closer inspection it reveals slight differences, 
indicative of a somewhat later style. It also shows but faint traces of 
coloring ; whereas on the Aristion stele, which is assigned to the early 
part of the fifth century, the coloring is still vivid. It was found serv- 
ing as a door-sill at the entrance of the church, — fortunately with the 
sculptured face downwards. Though broken into three parts, it is per- 
fect, with the exception of the head. 

As the work progressed, the field of operations extended, and a 
thorough exploration became a much greater undertaking than was 
originally expected. It cannot be said that the site has been ex- 
hausted. It still invites a closer and more systematic examination. 
Yet, within the space of three months, with but a few workmen, and 
at a total outlay of some $600, an important museum of antiquities 
was formed; and the monuments and inscriptions unearthed, dating 
from the sixth century B.C. to late Eoman times, reveal to us the pub- 
lic and private life of an important centre in Attica, during a period of 
seven or eight centuries. "Well might the late Prof. Curtius declare, 
at a meeting of the German Institute at Berlin, that these discoveries 
are "epoch-making." As the site excavated was private property, a 
portion of the objects found went to the state and a part to the owner; 
the latter refusing to sell them to the Government, but holding him- 
self responsible for their safe keeping. They have been removed to 
Stamata, the residence of Mr. Heliopoulos. 

At the very outset of the excavations at Ikaria, a third site was 
explored. The workmen led Mr. Buck two miles to the west of the 
valley on a ridge, where they said a stone existed " with flowers and 
letters on it." A grave, partially open, was found here, and near it the 
torso of a seated woman in high relief, the head of which had been 
broken off and sent to Germany ! One of the sides of the grave was 
formed by a sepulchral stele which bore two rosettes and an inscrip- 
tion of the fourth century, recording the names of the two deceased : 
one an Ikarian, and the other an inhabitant of Plotheia. The proximity 
of the latter deme to that of Ikaria had been surmised, but was now 
rendered almost certain Fortunately, fresh light was soon forthcom- 
ing on this point, as well as on the location of another deme,— that of 
Semachidae. 

A short distance from the point just spoken of, and a little beyond 
the ridge which shuts in on the north the valley leading to Ikaria, lies 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

the village of Stamata, half-way between Kephisia and Marathon. In 
the vicinity of the older and now abandoned site of that village three 
ruined churches are to be seen. One of these, which Mr. Buck visited 
in November, 1888, promised to yield important information, built up, 
as it was, of debris collected indiscriminately from ancient structures. 
Mr. H. S. Washington, of Yale, who had accompanied Mr. Buck, took 
charge of this exploration on December 27, he generously providing the 
necessary funds. A couple of days' work sufficed to bring to light, be- 
sides various other pieces of sculpture, a very fine and well preserved 
female torso, larger than life, of archaic workmanship, as well as four 
inscriptions which satisfactorily established this to have been the chief 
centre of the hitherto doubtful deme of Plotheia. That of Samachidae 
must therefore have been situated in the immediate vicinity. 

Before proceeding farther afield, reference must here be made to an 
exploration which, though undertaken six years later than the Boeotian 
excavations dealt with at the conclusion of this article, is intimately 
connected, in point of topography and history, with the work just re- 
corded. Prof. Merriam, under whose directorship of the School the 
excavations at Ikaria were carried out, encouraged by their brilliant 
results, had cherished the project of exploring another neighboring 
locality. He was urged by suggestions similar to those which had led 
him to St. Dionysius. Not far from that spot, about two and a half 
miles from the field of Marathon, and eighteen miles from Athens, a 
small valley, now known by the name of " Koukounari " (a pine-cone), 
is ensconced at the foot of Pentelicus. Plentiful tile fragments and the 
rich loam with which the place is covered — a rare feature in Attica — 
had attracted the attention of Dr. Milchhoffer, who surmised that this 
must have been the seat of an ancient deme of some importance. His 
conjecture was strengthened when, from the heap of stones surround- 
ing a ruined church and cloister situated on a narrow and low foot-hill 
in the valley, he drew the fragments of two votive reliefs. He was now 
of opinion that the cloister was established on the site of an ancient 
sanctuary ; and he thus wrote in his " Text zu Karten von Attika " (p. 
58) : " The spot, from its situation and the nature of the soil, promises 
to the excavator an easy and abundant reward." 

Encouraged by this promise, Prof. Merriam, after an absence of six 
years, returned to Athens, eager to reap new triumphs in that world which 
he loved so much, and with which he was so intimately acquainted. 
Though ailing, he could not be deterred from ascending once more the 
rock of the Acropolis, as if bound on a pilgrimage to the shrine that 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

centred his love and admiration. There he contracted a chill ; and he 
died on the fourth day, leaving a void in American scholarship not to 
be easily filled, and a gap in the ranks of the best friends of Greece. 
He was a scholar of the ideal type, conscientious and accurate in re- 
search, reprobating superficiality, and delighting in that "infinite ca- 
pacity for taking pains," which Carlyle considered identical with genius. 

The appropriation of $200, which he had obtained from the Ameri- 
can Institute of Archaeology for the purpose of excavating Koukou- 
nari, was now entrusted to Prof. K. Richardson, with the request that 
he undertake the exploration as a memorial service. Under his in- 
telligent superintendence, therefore, work was commenced on Febru- 
ary 15, 1895, and was continued with a force of thirty men for four 
days, Messrs. W. A. Elliott and Th. W. Heermance sharing in the work, 
with all the hardships which the snow and winter cold in that high 
region entailed. The soil was soaked with the rains ; and its handling 
became extremely difficult. Prof. Richardson was not sanguine as to 
the yield of the " old material " of which Milchhoffer speaks as being 
interspersed in the walls of the ruined buildings ; but, in compliance 
with the wishes of Mr. Heliopoulos, the owner of the property, and in 
order to carry out the plan of Prof. Merriam, he took down the south 
and west walls, which were the most dilapidated. Only an anthemion, 
forming the apex of a sepulchral stele, was found imbedded in these 
walls. Some other blocks, of the coarse marble quarried from the 
adjoining hill, were found worked in a manner strikingly similar to 
the blocks of the same inferior Pentelic stone noticeable in the wall 
of Themistocles, by the Dipylon Gate at Athens. The door-posts of 
the church are more carefully wrought, and must have formed parts 
of some older and nobler building. 

The search made outside the church proved more fruitful in evi- 
dence corroborative of Milchhoffer's belief that a temple had stood 
near. No foundations of such a structure were traced ; but in the 
stone-heaps two more fragments of votive reliefs were found : the one, 
a horse's head, — which, however, does not agree with Milchhoffer's frag- 
ment representing a span of horses, — the other, a draped trunk of a 
male figure seated on an elaborate throne, of excellent workmanship. 
Eight trenches were next dug down to the virgin soil and bed-rock of 
the rising ground on which the cloister stood ; and in these was dis- 
covered a third and important fragmentary relief. It contains the 
trunks of three persons,— two of majestic pose. The one to the left is 
nude : the other, draped, is apparently a female figure, with the right 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

hand extended toward the lip of the nude figure. In the extreme 
end stands a smaller figure, probably a worshipper. From the joint 
hands of the two larger figures proceeds downward what seems to be a 
club. These details are essential, as bearing out Milchhoffer's theory 
that here lay the deme of Hekale. The relief appears to represent the 
meeting of Theseus and Hekale, as related by Plutarch (" Theseus," c. 
14). A poor old woman, tradition said, befriended and entertained the 
young hero when he sallied forth to rid the country of the Marathonian 
bull ; and she vowed to offer up sacrifices for his success. She died, 
however, before he returned ; and Theseus therefore ordered the in- 
habitants of the Tetrapolis of Marathon regularly to offer up sacrifices 
to Zeus Hekaleius in honor of the good Hekale, after whom the deme, 
where her sanctuary stood, was also named. 

In connection with this relief, Milchhoffer's conjecture that this 
deme lay here gained greatly in strength by the discovery, made 
during the very first half -hour of the exploration, of an inscription of 
exceptional importance. Between the church and the cloister a slab 
of Pentelic marble was found, originally inscribed on both sides ; but 
as it had been reduced to serve as a door-sill, the exposed face had 
been trodden almost smooth. On the under-face, however, fifty-six 
lines, engraved in two columns, are still clearly legible. Though the 
beginning and the end of the inscription are broken off, the remaining 
text, which Prof. Richardson has published, accompanied with learned 
commentaries, shows it to be of the order of " sacrificial calendar " 
inscriptions, such as the Greeks set up in places where sacrifices were 
made very frequently. Lysias, in his oration (xxx. 17) against Kikom- 
achos, speaks of sacrifices offered according to the prescriptions of 
similar tablets, fragments of which had been recovered in the course 
of previous excavations ; but this is by far the most complete and 
important specimen of the kind yet found. It enumerates, within 
its extant portion, no less than thirty-nine divinities, the names of 
several of which do not occur elsewhere ; it prescribes the animals, etc. 
to be offered as sacrifices, and states the prices to be paid. This last 
feature alone is a valuable contribution to the history of prices of 
commodities in ancient Greece. With regard however to the identi- 
fication of the locality, — since the presumption is strong that so large 
a stele has remained where it was originally set up, — the inscription 
defines the sacrifice offered " by the inhabitants of the Tetrapolis " and 
repeatedly refers to the " hero " and the " heroine." So that, although 
the name of Hekale does not appear in the extant portion, it may, 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

very probably, Have been recorded in the missing preamble. The 
form of the letters and the style of orthography place the date of the 
inscription between 440 and 360 B.C. These not inconsiderable re- 
sults — especially the importance of the inscription — had decided Prof. 
Kichardson to resume and complete the exploration of Koukounari at 
some later season ; particularly as only half the appropriation had been 
expended in the first attempt. 

When the excavations of Ikaria and Stamata were brought to a 
close, the task of the American explorers was considered as ended in 
Attica; and their interest was centred in the adjoining province of 
Bceotia. The attention of archaeologists had already been drawn to 
that quarter by a number of unusual objects — the outcome of surrepti- 
tious excavations — which dealers in antiquities had been offering for 
some time previously in the market of Athens. In the spring of 1888, 
the German School had undertaken some search near Thebes, in con- 
nection with the imperfectly known worship of the Kabeiroi, to which 
those objects related. And, consequently, with the recommendation of 
the Ephor-General of Antiquities, the American School applied, in 
the winter of 1888, and obtained permission of the Greek Government, 
to explore the sites of Anthedon and Thisbe. 

The ancient geographer, Stephanus of Byzantium, explains the 
name of Anthedon by the abundance of flowers which remains to this 
day a distinguishing feature of the locality. Homer ("Iliad," ii. 508) 
first speaks of the town as the farthermost in Bceotia. Pausanias, 
Strabo, Theolytus, — the last-mentioned a poet quoted by Athenaeus 
(vii. 296), — and the author of the description of Greece commonly 
attributed to Dikaearchos, refer to Anthedon as situated on the Euripus, 
the strait of Euboea, at the foot of Mount Messapion, seventy stadia 
from Chalcis and a hundred and sixty from Thebes. These indications 
were sufficient to enable the most critical of modern travellers in 
Greece, Colonel Leake (" Trav. in K Greece," 271-5), to identify the 
site by the remains of certain walls which he observed about a mile 
and a half to the north of the village of Loukisi ; which latter he con- 
nects with the Nisa of Homer. Leake, whose inferences were con- 
firmed by subsequent travellers, gives a sketch-plan of the site, 
which served as an initial guide to the American explorers. 

The pseudo- Dikaearchos speaks of Anthedon as a small town with 
an agora surrounded by a double portico, and planted with trees. 
Pausanias refers to the sacred grove and sanctuary of the Kabeiroi 
"somewhere about the centre of the city"; close to it he places the 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

temple of Demeter and Kora ; outside the walls, that of Dionysos, with 
a statue in marble ; and finally, near the sea, the so-called Leap of 
Grlaucus, which, as Mr. Buck thinks, " was probably a natural cliff like 
the numerous Lovers' Leaps on our eastern coast" ; — most likely the 
abrupt declivity of the rock of the Acropolis facing the sea. Grlaucus, 
Pausanius explains, was a fisherman of Anthedon, but was metamor- 
phosed into a maritime deity, predicting the future, and delivering 
oracular responses which seafaring and other men believed. From 
him the Anthedonii derived their origin ; and, like him, they led the 
lives of sailors, fishermen, and shipwrights. That they were of a dif- 
ferent race than the rest of the Boeotians is certain ; but the fact that 
they ultimately joined the Boeotian League has been established by one 
of the inscriptions recently unearthed. 

Work on the site was begun on March 5, 1889, under Mr. J. C. 
Kolfe, of Harvard, son of the well-known Shakespearian scholar, and 
was continued, with some twenty-five workmen, for three weeks ; Mr. 
C. D. Buck being also present. The entire area of the ancient town, 
which was soon ascertained to be more extensive from south to north 
than indicated in Leake's plan, was under cultivation as grain-fields. 
The exploration therefore was started at the " platform " by the sea ; 
and fourteen trenches were dug in different directions from it inward. 
The foundations of a most extensive and intricate structure, connected 
with the platform, were thus unearthed ; but nothing was found in- 
dicative of its character or purpose. It covers so large a stretch of 
ground that a visitor to the excavations thought it must be the town 
itself. Leake styled the remains, as he saw them, " a public build- 
ing" ; but the most reasonable surmise is that they were those of the 
agora and stoa. The foundations belong to a good Greek period ; but 
some of the walls are of later and inferior workmanship. In the 
southern portion a beautiful Eoman mosaic floor was laid bare. 

As the area of the town contained no other visible remnant that 
could serve as guide to further search, a very long trench, with two 
lateral branches, was now dug across, from the southern slope of the 
Acropolis to the city walls, in the hope of coming upon the temple of 
the Kabeiroi This work, as well as some trials made on the hill of 
the Acropolis, yielded no results ; but an inspection of the city walls 
revealed more extensive remains than those indicated by Leake. A 
small hill, which rises immediately outside these walls, seemed a 
promising spot on which to seek for the temple of Dionysos ; since the 
locality agreed with the language of Pausanias. Three trenches were 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE 

consequently opened, in one of which certain foundations were met 
with ; and these, having been followed up and cleared of earth, showed 
the substructure of a very small temple built of well cut blocks of the 
local porous stone. A Doric capital and the unfluted drum of a col- 
umn, lying near, strengthened the belief that this must have been 
the site of the shrine of Dionysos. A further trial was made on a low 
hill, east of the town, on the road to Chalcis, where fragments of Doric 
architecture — one piece still retaining traces of color — and a number of 
inscriptions were unearthed. Two of these record dedications to Ar- 
temis Eilithyia, the goddess aiding women in child-bed; and these 
inscriptions, coupled with the architectural remains discovered, point 
to the existence of a temple of that divinity in this neighborhood. 

In one of the trenches, which was carried a hundred feet beyond 
the temple of Dionysos, a collection of some twenty-five implements 
and small ornaments was found, together with sheet bronze and a quan- 
tity of bronze slag, — evidently remnants of a bronze-smith's factory. 
These objects, which are now exhibited in the Central Museum at 
Athens, include two-edged axes, chisels, drills, an awl, a sickle-like 
razor, and a large variety of knives. Some, similar to those recently 
discovered on the Acropolis of Athens are used ; while others are ap- 
parently fresh from the hands of the maker. But the most consider- 
able results of these excavations are the inscriptions. Hitherto only 
one inscription from Anthedon was known to exist. No less than 
sixty are now available for study; ranging from the fifth century B.C. 
to the second century of our era. Most of these are very short ; but 
they are all of the highest importance, elucidating and supplementing, 
as .they do, the local peculiarities of the Boeotian dialect. < 

The work at Anthedon, as it will have been seen, was rather promis- 
cuous, and was considered as " merely experimental. " While it was still 
in progress, Mr. Eolfe, entrusting the further superintendence to Mr. 
Buck, undertook, on March 27, at the head of fifteen men, the explora- 
tion of Thisbe, the site of which he had examined a week earlier. Leake 
(" Northern Greece," ii. 506) had identified the modern village of Ka- 
kosia with the ancient Thisbe. It stands at a small distance from the 
Gulf of Corinth, under the southern slope of Helicon, 

" between two great summits of the mountain, which rise majestically above the 
vale, clothed with trees in the upper part and covered with snow at the top. . . 
The modern village lies in a little hollow surrounded on all sides by low cliffs. . . 
The walls of Thisbe were about a mile in circuit, following the crest of the cliffs, 
and are chiefly preserved at the southeast." 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Leake further describes the masonry of these walls, the remains of a 
mole or causeway across the marshy plain to the south, as also the 
ruin of a Hellenic tower or station on a ridge looking down upon the 
port of Thisbe, now known as Yathy ( " the deep " ), — a beautiful little 
harbor encircled by rocks and wooded hills. These, as well as the 
islands beyond, are to this day peopled by flocks of the wild doves 
which, as Strabo and Stephanus of Byzantium state, earned for Thisbe 
the Homeric designation of polytreron, "abounding in doves " ("Iliad," 
ii. 502). Both Ovid ("Metam.," xi. 300) and Statius ("Thebaid," vii. 
261) speak of the Thisbsean doves ; and Leake found them to be equally 
plentiful in the woods around Kakosia. Pausanias refers to the temple 
of Herakles at Thisbe, and to the statue of the hero which it enshrined. 
Though the modern settlement is a small one, it must have been a 
place of considerable importance — owing no doubt to its strong defens- 
ive position — in Byzantine times. No less than twenty churches of that 
epoch, most of them now in ruins, may be counted on the site. Around 
one of these, the church of St. Luke, — standing within the village, but 
outside the ancient walls, — Mr. Eolfe dug some trenches, which yielded 
only a pillar of very fine Byzantine workmanship and ornamentation. 
The walls of two other ruined churches were taken down ; and here 
some inscribed tombstones were found. In all, fifteen inscriptions were 
recovered ; and they are published by Messrs. Eolfe and Tarbell in the 
fifth volume of the " Papers." The earliest publication of a Thisbsean 
inscription is due to the Greek Meletius, who visited the spot a century 
before Leake. The original stone of this inscription, Leake was unable 
to find ; but he transcribed four other engraved slabs. The abundant 
yield of inscriptions, even after so cursory and superficial a search, was 
full of promise. But the exploration of Thisbe also was confined to 
tentative operations only. It was explained that " as the modern vil- 
lage stands directly on the ancient site, extensive excavations must 
involve considerable expense." The explorers therefore decided to 
concentrate all their energies on the more attractive site of Plataia, 
which had been included in the concession made to them to excavate 
at Anthedon and Thisbe. And to Plataia I shall follow them in my 
next article. 

J. GrENNADIUS, 



REPRINTED FROM 

44 The Forum" 

FOR JUNE, 1897 



American Excavations in Greece 
Plataia and Eretria 



By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1896, by the Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to republish articles is reserved. 



AMEKICAN AKCHJEOLOGICAL WOKK IX GKEECE. 

When the American explorers commenced operations in Boeotia, 
their principal objective was Plataia. The historic celebrity of that 
name lent to the site itself an absorbing archaeological interest. 

A few words will suffice to remind the reader of the glorious 
but tragic history of the gallant little Boeotian town, which, alone of 
the other Greek cities, shared with Athens the imperishable laurels of 
Marathon, and which became later the scene of the great battle against 
the Persian invaders and of their final rout (479 B.C.). The town had 
been previously sacked and burned by Mardonius, the Persian com- 
mander ; and the great victory having been won on its devastated terri- 
tory, the allied Greeks awarded the Plataeans, out of the Persian spoils, 
eighty talents (about $153,000) with which to rebuild their homes and 
erect the temple of Athena Areia. They further declared Plataia an 
inviolable city, and conferred on its citizens honors and special 
privileges ; making them guardians of the tombs of the heroes who fell 
for the freedom of Greece, and entrusting them with the celebration of 
the festival of the Eleutheria, sacred to Zeus the Deliverer, which con- 
tinued every fifth year, down to the time of Plutarch. The large- 
hearted patriotism of the Plataeans, however, was as opposed to the 
time-serving policy of the Thebans as their origin was said to have 
been distinct from that of their neighbors and irreconcilable foes. The 
two cities stood only five miles apart ; and the Thebans, sallying from 
their stronghold and disposing of superior forces, could easily surprise 
their enemies, after a march of only two hours. The Plataeans, there- 
fore, having to depend only upon the rather distant alliance of Athens, 
fortified their city and, later, built extensive walls. The Thebans did, 
as a matter of fact, attempt to carry the place by surprise at the out- 
break of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). But, having been repulsed 
with great slaughter, they returned with the Lacedaemonians and laid 
siege to Plataia, which was defended with unsurpassed heroism for a 
period of three years. When at length the garrison, having been 
reduced to two hundred and twenty-five men, surrendered, the The- 
bans razed the city to the ground. 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

In 387 the Lacedaemonians, being now at war with the Thebans, 
reinstated in their old homes the survivors of the Plataeans, who had 
meanwhile found refuge in Athens. But the city was again taken 
and destroyed by the Thebans in 372, and again restored, for the third 
time, by Philip of Macedon, after the battle of Chaeronea in 338. Five 
centuries later Plataia was visited by Pausanias, who refers to the 
temple of Hera, as well as to that of Athena Areia, which boasted of 
a famous statue by Phidias, and of the paintings of Polygnotos and 
Onatas. Of the temple of Zeus Eleutherius nothing then remained but 
the statue of the god and an altar. But mention is made of another 
temple, that of Demeter Eleusinia, and of the tomb of Leitus, the only 
one of the Boeotian chiefs who returned from Troy. In the fifth century 
of our era Plataia is referred to by Hierocles, the Neo-Platonist ; and 
about a hundred years later Procopios ("De ^Edif.," iv. 2) states that 
its walls were restored once more by the Emperor Justinian. After 
this, Plataia gradually sinks out of view. Its exposed situation must 
have rendered it an easy prey to the successive invaders who swept 
over Northern Greece. But its site has remained marked by a vast 
and confused mass of ruins. 

Of modern travellers, Leake serves here again as our most relia- 
ble guide. The ruins stand on a fan-shaped, flat plateau — whence, most 
probably, the name of the ancient city — about 1,400 metres long from 
north to south and 1,000 metres in its greatest width. It stretches 
northward into the plain from off the steep and rugged slope of Mount 
Kithaeron, which rises majestically to the south. About a mile north 
of the city the river Oe'roe flows through the plain westward toward 
the Euripus ; while the Asopos, which has its source in the immediate 
vicinity, travels westward to the Gulf of Corinth. On the plateau, the 
line of the outer walls — about eight feet in thickness and fortified with 
towers — forms an elongated triangle. Two inner walls mark off a 
rounded enclosure to the southwest, and a smaller triangular area to 
the extreme south. The latter embraces the highest point of the entire 
site, and, being separated from the lower rocks of Kithaeron by a ravine 
only fifty yards wide at its narrowest part, is supposed by Leake to 
have been the acropolis in pre-Persian times, and to have included 
the entire original city. Its walls are of a more ancient construction 
than the rest, and are probably the only portions dating prior to the 
Persian war. "In almost every other part the masonry is of a less 
ancient kind, and the ruins of former buildings may be detected among 
the materials ; which is no more than consistent with the troubled his- 

2o 



AMERICAN ARCHiEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

tory of later Plataia and the many repairs and renewals it underwent" 
The temple of Zeus Eleutherius, and the adjacent tombs of the Atheni- 
ans, the Lacedaemonians, and the other Greeks, were situated outside 
the principal gate, the foundations of which Leake traced not far from 
the northeastern angle of the wall. This spot he believed to be the 
one marked by a ruined church — apparently the same church which 
Dodwell (i. 279) attributes to St Demetrius, and in which he noticed 
two inscriptions imbedded. 

As we shall see, the results of the first and second campaigns were 
not brilliant. It was only thanks to Mr. Washington's persevering 
enthusiasm and conscientious labors that substantial results were ob- 
tained in the spring of 1891, and the situation was thus saved. 

Through the exertions of Mr. Wesley Harper, Dr. Lamborn, and 
Mr. H. Gr. Marquand, a sufficient sum had been collected to warrant 
the undertaking of the work, which was accordingly begun on April 
2, 1889, with sixty-three workmen ; Dr. Waldstein assuming the direc- 
tion. His object, as explained in the report, was first to find some 
architectural, artistic, or epigraphic clue indicating points upon which 
work might be concentrated. Byzantine churches are, as we have seen, 
rich depositories of such indications ; and the extensive site of Plataia 
included no less than nine such ruins visible above ground. It was 
therefore decided to dig near several of these ; and, the force of work- 
men having been divided into three sections, the party under Dr. 
Waldstein explored, during the first three days, an equal number of 
these structures; but with only negative results. Mr. R B. Tarbell 
examined the church believed to have been sacred to St Demetrius, 
and two other similar ruins ; but he quitted the excavations on the 
second day. Mr. J. C. Eolfe, after three days' work on the church of 
St. Nicolas and another church to the west of the city wall, was joined 
by Dr. Waldstein ; their efforts being now concentrated upon a three- 
apsed church, where Mr. Tarbell had dug on the first day. This struct- 
ure yielded only a number of classic architectural fragments. 

At this point the work of the first season at Plataia, which lasted 
only four days, was brought to a close ; and it would have been reckoned 
as of a purely tentative character, had not the researches of Messrs. Tar- 
bell and Eolfe resulted in the discovery of twelve inscriptions, subse- 
quently published by them in the fifth volume of the " Papers." The 
most important of these is a Latin inscription which had served, in the 
three-apsed church, as a paving-stone, and was partly imbedded under its 
walls. As it lay face uppermost, about half the lettering on the right 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

side was worn away ; while, of the fifty-five lines which compose it, the 
first is chipped off. On examination it proved to be the first portion of 
the preamble of the famous Edict of Diocletian (a.d. 285) "De Pretiis 
Kerum Venalium," which fixed the maximum prices of commodities 
throughout the empire. 

The text of this Edict was already known from other inscriptions ; 
but in it important gaps existed, which were now supplied by the 
Platsean copy,— noteworthy also by the fact that it is the only version 
of the Edict in the Latin original found in Greece proper. Several 
fragments of the Greek translation had been previously discovered in 
other parts of the country ; and during the excavations of the second 
season yet another portion of the Greek version was unearthed at 
Plataia, — the stele on which it is engraved having done duty as a 
covering-stone to a Byzantine grave. This portion contains a chapter 
relating to the prices of textiles ; and, from squeezes of the inscription 
and copies sent to him, Prof. Mommsen, who had for many years de- 
voted himself to the study of the numerous extant fragments of the 
Edict, edited, at the request of the American School, this latest frag- 
ment and published it in the fifth volume of the " Papers." 

The second campaign at Plataia partook more of the character of 
topographical research than of systematic excavations. After some 
delay, arising from the severity of the weather, Mr. Washington began 
work on February 19, and later on he was joined by all the members of 
the School, with Dr. Waldstein at their head. The work of this season 
was brought to a close on March 12. The sites of Byzantine churches 
were again taken as starting-points ; but all attempts at tracing the 
temples of Demeter and of Hera proved abortive ; the main result of the 
season's exploration being confined to four more inscriptions. With 
regard to topography, Mr. Washington undertook to make a careful 
and definitive survey of the entire site, the extant accounts of which 
fail to give satisfactory data, or mark with accuracy the exact position 
and present condition of the city walls. Mr. Washington's exhaustive 
report, accompanied by a map and the ground-plans of six of the By- 
zantine churches by Mr. H. D. Hall, is inserted in the " Papers," and 
shows that the walls, built principally of the rough gray marble quar- 
ried out of the southern ridge of Kithaeron, are assignable to five dis- 
tinct periods— from the earliest polygonal to the later Eoman and 
Byzantine styles of masonry. 

Another important matter was the elucidation of certain questions 
connected with the battle-field of Plataia. The accounts of the battle, 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

and the description of the Persian encampments and the successive 
positions of the Greeks given by Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, 
and other ancient writers, have been the source of many doubts and 
disputations. The task therefore of studying the whole question afresh 
was now confided to Mr. W. Irving Hunt, with the result that his 
"Notes on the Battle-field of Plataia " have cleared up several hitherto 
contested points, and have defined the famous "island " of Oeroe. 

The continuance of the exploration of Plataia during a third season 
was due to Mr. "Washington, whose devotion and intelligent enthusiasm 
were recompensed by a notable success. He resumed work on April 20, 
1891 ; devoting the first three days to a renewed search of the several 
spots marked by Byzantine churches, ruined walls, and hewn blocks of 
stone. Each point however was successively abandoned in despair. 
Finally, on April 23, he moved to a place nearer the centre of the walls, 
where a series of sockets cut in the protruding rock was noticed, and 
which were supposed to have held votive offerings. A little to the 
south the ground rises one and one-half to two metres above the field, 
forming a terrace some forty by thirty metres. Hewn blocks were 
found here, — some fallen below the terrace, and others in situ. The 
spot seemed promising ; and two parallel trenches running north and 
south of the terrace were dug. After half an hour's work a wall was 
laid bare in each trench, a few feet below the surface. The entire force 
of workmen was now employed in following up the lines of this wall 
and in sinking additional cross-trenches to the bed-rock. In the space 
of four days the foundations of a longitudinal building with cross- walls 
and an outer encircling wall were cleared. 

These foundations are built of smoothly cut blocks of porous stone 
Only one block of gray marble — of the kind in general use at Plataia 
— still rests on the southeastern corner ; and another marble block, part 
of the upper course of the crepidoma, showing the trace of one of the 
steps, was found near the northeastern corner. With the exception of 
a few pieces of roofing-tiles, not a single fragment of any part of the 
superstructure was discernible anywhere near the spot. The founda- 
tion-walls and the two marble fragments just referred to were the only 
architectural remains giving any clue to the reconstruction of the 
building, the determination of its age, or the elucidation of its character 
and purpose. But the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the trained 
archaeologist are equal to the solution of problems of this kind. The 
physiologist, in reconstructing some extinct animal out of the evi- 
dence supplied by a couple of bones, accomplishes a feat perhaps less 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

remarkable than the reconstruction of entire edifices and whole cities by 
the intelligent and close reasoning of the archaeologist. Therefore the 
careful study, by means of which Mr. Washington succeeded in deter- 
mining satisfactorily the above three points, deserves some explanation, 
however brief. It is a typical instance of archaeological investigation. 
I should add that a small terra-cotta statuette of a seated and veiled 
woman, of a very simple type, and a coin of the Emperor Licinius (ad. 
307-324) were found among the ruins, within the area of which a 
layer of blackened earth next the rock was also visible. 

Let us now see by what process of reasoning the problem was 
solved. To begin with, the ground plan of the foundations shows them 
to be those of a peripteral Doric temple of the archaic type. Now, 
the more complete remains of similar temples, such as the Heraeum 
at Olympia, serve to determine the setting back, from the edge of the 
extant lower course of gray marble, of the usual three steps on 
which the columns of Greek temples rest. This point having thus 
been determined, the diameter of the columns is easily arrived at, since 
their entire weight must fall within the breadth of the underlying 
foundation-wall. Consequently, by following the measurements of the 
extant foundations, the distance from centre to centre of the angle- 
columns is fixed at 13.30 metres on the ends and at 46.50 metres on 
the flanks of the temple. The usual proportions of intercolumnation 
being known from other early Doric structures, the dimensions just ob- 
tained lead to the conclusion that this temple must have been a hexa- 
style ; i e., it had six columns at each end and eighteen or nineteen on 
each flank. As to material, the fact that not a vestige of the superstruc- 
ture remains, must be taken to point to the probability of its having 
been built of marble ; for such material was used up with avidity, both 
by the Byzantines and the Turks, in the manufacture of lime. Prefer- 
ence would, of course, be given to wl*at was within easy reach ; and 
the site of this temple is on level and exposed ground. 

With regard to its age, the style and workmanship of the masonry, 
the shape of the iron clamps (as indicated by the holes on the stone 
blocks — for the clamps themselves had disappeared), the arrangement of 
the cella, and the ratio of the number of end and flank columns — six 
to eighteen — assign the foundation- walls to the end of the sixth or the 
beginning of the fifth century B.C. The layer of blackened earth, re- 
ferred to above, points to the fact that the building which originally 
stood on these foundations was destroyed by fire. And, from the 
historic facts known to us, it may be safely inferred that it was rebuilt,, 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

as we shall presently see, in 427 B.C. on these same foundations. 
"When inquiring next to which divinity this temple was dedicated, 
we find that the range of selection is narrowed down to Hera, Athena 
Areia, the Eleusinian Demeter, and Artemis Eukleia, who were all 
honored, as we know, with noteworthy sanctuaries at Plataia. The 
alternative supposition, that this temple might have been sacred to 
some other divinity, is not tenable ; since, if such were the case, so im- 
portant and commanding an edifice would not have been passed over in 
silence by ancient writers, who refer to other shrines at Plataia less 
noteworthy than the above. The temple of Demeter is spoken of as 
lying at a distance from the city. That of Artemis is mentioned by 
Plutarch once (" Aristid.," xx); but, as it is ignored by Pausanias, it 
could not have been of much importance. As regards the temple of 
Athena, both Plutarch and Pausanias (but, strangely enough, not Hero- 
dotus) state that it was erected out of the share of the Persian spoils 
ceded to the Plataeans. There is, however, no indication of its locality ; 
and altogether our information respecting it is vague and scanty. 

Not so in the case of the Herseum. The temple of Hera is first 
mentioned in connection with the battle of Plataia, when the left wing 
of the Greek army, falling back before the Persians, took up a posi- 
tion in front of the sacred precincts, which, Herodotus says, lay " be- 
fore the city." It is also related that the Spartan commander, — who 
was stationed at a certain distance, close to the temple of Demeter, — 
finding the sacrifices unpropitious, looked up toward the Heraeum and 
invoked the help of the goddess. When, half a century later, the 
Thebans razed Plataia to the ground, they constructed near the 
Herseum an inn two hundred feet square for the accommodation of 
pilgrims to the shrine. They also erected (427 B.C.) in honor of Hera 
"a marble temple of a hundred feet" This was the temple which 
Pausanias visited, and which he describes as standing " within the city " 
and as remarkable for its great size and the statues it contained, — two 
by Praxiteles and one by Kallimachos. 

The apparent contradiction between Herodotus and Pausanias, as 
to the locality of the temple, is easily reconcilable. The remains of 
the city walls indicate that the city was originally confined to the 
southern elevation of the plateau, and that later it extended northward 
to its outer and lower portion, where the temple stands. So that 
when Pausanias saw it, in the second century of our era, it was, as a 
matter of fact, within the then extended city walls ; whereas, at the 
time of the battle of Plataia (479 B.C.), to which Herodotus refers, the 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

site of the temple was still outside the walls and just " before the city." 
This also explains the retrograde movement of a portion of the Greek 
army on to the plateau, where they ranged themselves under the 
shadow of the sanctuary of the great goddess, while the Spartan com- 
mander invoked her aid, looking up from the position he held lower 
down in the plain. 

At that time the temple itself, with the rest of the city of Plataia, 
must have been already laid waste by the Persians. The evidence of 
the layer of blackened earth on the foundations leaves no doubt that 
it was burnt at an early date. Now, as the masonry of the extant 
foundations is clearly pre-Persian, and as the statement of Thucydides 
is that the Thebans " erected to Hera a marble temple of a hundred 
feet," the natural inference is that the temple which the Plataeans re- 
built after the rout of the Persians, must have been an inferior struc- 
ture. Thucydides distinctly states that the later one was of marble. 
It was therefore pulled down by the Thebans and reerected — in honor 
of a divinity they also specially revered — with greater splendor, but 
on the same ancient foundations. The original localities of sanctuaries 
were scrupulously regarded by the Greeks. 

The indications of the locality itself support the theory that here 
stood the temple of Hera. I have already alluded to the sockets sunk 
in the adjoining rocks for votive stelae. Just below the terrace, on 
which are the foundations, and a little to the north, Mr. Washington 
traced the remains of an extensive building ; and these are no doubt 
the remains of the great inn which the Thebans built near the temple. 
With regard to the objects found in the ruins, the small clay figure is 
supposed to have been a votive copy of the seated statue of Hera by 
Kallimachos. This figurine has a veil over the head ; and Hera, the 
bride of Zeus, was generally represented as veiled. Finally, the coin 
of Licinius would testify that the temple must have been still standing 
in his time — about a hundred and fifty years after Pausanias. 

Such briefly is the able and ingenious argument, in which hardly a 
link is wanting, whereby Mr. Washington establishes the identity of 
his discovery with the famous Heraeum of the Plataeans. It is an 
achievement that reflects great credit on the American archaeologist, 
who moreover upheld the honor of the School by prosecuting the 
exploration of Plataia to a definite conclusion. Even as it is, the 
foundations of the Heraeum itself have not been entirely cleared of 
earth ; and in archaeological explorations only the complete clearance 
of a site can guarantee that all that may be found has actually been 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

secured. It is this system of absolute thoroughness which the Ger- 
mans adopted with such brilliant results at Olympia. It is the only 
safe and truly scientific system. 

But, while Mr. "Washington was assiduously toiling at Plataia, 
other undertakings had already engaged the attention of the Directors 
of the School. Early in 1889 certain unauthorized excavations made 
in the neighborhood of Eretria and, later, a more systematic exploration 
of its ancient necropolis, undertaken by the Greek Archaeological 
Society, yielded a rich harvest of vases, terra-cotta figurines, and other 
considerable objects. Irrespective of these finds, however, both the 
historical fame of the city and its extant remains above ground were 
sufficient to invite serious attention. Therefore, in the summer of 1890 
the American School obtained permission to explore this site also. 

The ancient city of Eretria was situated on a small projection of 
the island of Euboea, a little to the southwest of Chalcis, at a point 
where the Strait of Euripus, being only four miles broad, presents the 
aspect of an inland sea. Lying out of the beaten track of travellers 
and on a spot not easy of access, Eretria was seldom visited. Dodwell 
(ii. 154) and, more especially, Leake are, in this instance also, the best 
of modern guides. Leake, who states that " Eretria by means of its 
desolation has preserved remains affording an interesting confirmation 
of the former importance of the city," refers to the commanding towers 
of its acropolis, its city walls, and theatre, and to numerous founda- 
tions of buildings. These remains suffered considerably since Leake's 
time, owing to the fact that King Otho, attracted by its classic memo- 
ries, chose the site of Eretria as a settlement for the survivors of the 
heroic island of Psara, which had been completely devastated by the 
Turks. The plan of a modern town was laid out within the area of 
the ancient walls and, on the rising ground, a naval school was 
erected for the young Psariot sailors; considerable quantities of the 
accessible old material being utilized in this abortive revival. The 
swamp fevers of the marsh, which had gradually extended to within 
the walls, rendered the place uninhabitable, especially during the hot 
season ; so that at the present time about four hundred people tenant 
for part of the year some of the one hundred and fifty modern houses, 
which, in their turn, are now mostly in ruins. 

It was in these surroundings that the Americans entered upon the 
exploration of Eretria on February 1, 1891. The first season's work, 
which, ending on March 20, was interfered with by rigorous weather, and 
included only twenty-eight days, was under the superintendence of the 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

Annual Director of the School, Prof. Rufus Richardson, who undertook 
also the elucidation of inscriptions. Mr. A. Fossum, of Johns Hop- 
kins University, and Mr. C. L. Brownson, of Yale, had charge of the 
excavation of the theatre ; while Mr. J. Pickard, of Dartmouth College, 
and Mr. J. W. Gilbert, of Brown University, surveyed the walls of the 
city and produced an excellent topographical map of the district 
Finally, Dr. Waldstein searched the extensive lines of graves outside 
the walls ; making several interesting finds of vases and other small 
objects. The alleged finding of Aristotle's tomb, believed in and an- 
nounced at first, but very properly withdrawn later, need not be re- 
ferred to here. 

Mr. Pickard's able " Topographical Study " has supplied ample de- 
tails of the site and the ancient fortifications. The acropolis, at the 
northeastern corner, stands on an eminence 116 metres high, and forms 
an irregular enclosure 200 metres across. From it, two parallel walls, 
each about 1,200 metres in length, extend down to the harbor in irreg- 
ular lines, 600 metres apart at their abutment. At intervals of about 
fifty-five yards they were dotted with towers 6 to 9 metres in diameter. 
Of these walls, the entire circuit of which is two and one-half miles, 
only the foundations remain. The walls and towers of the citadel 
however still stand, some four metres above ground ; their imposing 
proportions, and the weather-worn surface of the huge blocks quarried 
from the bed-rock from which they rise, testifying to their great an- 
tiquity. A cross-wall separates the citadel from the lower city ; and at 
this point, concealed under slight elevations of earth, are the remains 
of the towers which guarded the gates leading out into the Sacred 
Way. The course of this ancient road can be followed for miles to 
the east, by the multitude of graves which line it on either side. 
Finally, numerous remains of various other structures, marking the 
lines of the streets of the city, are still traceable on the steep hillsides. 

Of the auditorium of the theatre, which stood lower down, close to 
the western wall, the entire area was found covered by a shroud of 
earth varying from 1 to 3 metres in depth ; but the general out- 
line of the cavea was easily discernible. The fact that the natural 
slope available higher up the hill had not been taken advantage of, as 
was almost invariably the case in Greek theatres, but that an artificial 
mound had been raised to support the rising rows of seats, suggested 
that the location of the theatre had been decided by the proximity of 
an ancient sanctuary of Dionysos. The cavea forms slightly more than 
half a circle, with a diameter, on the level of the orchestra, of 24.88 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

metres, which is larger than the theatre at Athens (22.50) or at Epi- 
dauros (24.50) ; although the entire capacity of the cavea in each of 
these theatres is much greater. Of the thrones of the priests and offi- 
cials, only fragments were discovered ; but the front rows of the seats, 
which were found in fairly good preservation, are so low as to suggest 
that cushions were placed on them, as was undoubtedly the case in 
the Dionysiac theatre of Athens. The orchestra was overlaid with 
beaten earth only, — paving, such as is seen in Athens, having been in- 
troduced in Koman times, — and was bounded by a curb, between which 
and the lowest step the usual sunken drain carried off the rain-water 
into a subterranean aqueduct 

Independently of this, another tunnel-like passage, 13 metres in 
length and 2 in height, passes obliquely under the orchestra and 
abuts at its centre, into which it opens by a flight of steps. Similar 
steps give access to it from under the proscenium. The discovery of a 
feature so distinct and novel in the structural economy of a Greek 
theatre led, as we have seen in a previous article, to a closer investi- 
gation of a similar passage noticed at Sicyon, which, however, served 
there also as a drain. In the present case, the points of the theatre 
joined by means of this tunnel left no doubt that its purpose was to 
enable persons engaged in the performance to appear suddenly on the 
orchestra, before the spectators, and again disappear from view. Such 
apparitions would not have been compatible with the role of the chorus, 
whose movements to and from the orchestra are well defined. The 
inference therefore seemed conclusive that the secret passage was des- 
tined for the use of actors who, leaving the dressing-rooms in the rear 
of the proscenium, had to emerge in the orchestra as if from below. 

There are situations in the Greek drama which, without the inter- 
vention of some such device, had been hitherto unintelligible. Some 
years prior to this discovery, Prof. Wilamowitz pointed out (" Hermes " 
[1886], xxi. 608) that it was necessary to conceive the existence of an 
estrade in the centre of the orchestra in order to understand aright that 
passage of the " Persians " (v. 619-675) of ^Eschylus, in which the 
chorus, urged by Atossa to call up the ghost of Darius, supplicate the 
powers of the lower world and invoke Darius to rise above the mound 
that covers his tomb. Darius appears in the midst of the chorus — who 
stand around his grave — and again vanishes from view. This and other 
passages in the Greek tragedies, such as the disappearance of Prome- 
theus and the Oceanidas in " Prometheus Bound," could have been 
represented satisfactorily only by the help of a concealed passage lead- 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

ing to the centre of the orchestra : the stage itself of the Greek theatre 
offered no other suitable appliance. In an extant fragment of ^Eschy- 
lus's " Sisyphos," allusion is made to such subterraneous movement of 
the actor. Furthermore, the "Steps of Charon," of which Pollux 
('• Onomasticon,' 1 iv. 132) speaks, and as to the precise meaning of which 
there existed considerable divergence of opinion, can be explained in- 
telligibly only by this latest discovery at Eretria. Subsequently to 
this, German archaeologists found similar passages in the theatres of 
Magnesia and Tralles, in Asia Minor ; and indications of a like struc- 
ture are announced from Argos. All these evidences confirm the con- 
vincing explanation given by the American explorers of their discovery. 

But the most important part of the Eretrian theatre is the stage- 
building. It is of importance on account of its elaborate design and 
the successive modifications it underwent, which serve as evidence of 
the developments in the architecture of the Greek theatre. Its re- 
mains range from the earliest polygonal masonry to work of the 
first century B.C. In its main dispositions it answers to the stage- 
building at Athens, with the exception of a vaulted passage running 
under its entire breadth on to the orchestra, to the probable use of 
which I shall refer presently. The plans of the theatre and its recon- 
struction, as drawn by Mr. Fossum, were approved and corroborated 
by Prof. Dorpfeld, who had visited the site. Their joint conclusions 
however gave rise to an animated controversy as to the economy of the 
Greek stage ; Mr. E. A. Gardner, Director of the British School, Mr. 
Loring, and Miss Sellers expressing very divergent opinions. But 
Prof. Dorpf eld's profound study of the subject, as set forth in the 
exhaustive work which he published a few months ago, may, I think, 
be accepted as a safe guide. 

The first season was now brought to a close. Twenty- eight days' 
work on a site of such vast possibilities could not have amounted to 
much more than tentative search. A second campaign was therefore 
undertaken in January, 1892, under Prof. "W. C. Poland, then Annual 
Director, who, accompanied by Messrs. Brownson and Fox, continued, 
for a short while, the clearing of the theatre. But the work still 
lagged ; the centre of interest having again been transferred by Dr. 
Waldstein to Argos. Nothing further was done during the ensuing 
year ; but on May 3, 1894, Prof. Kichardson, accompanied by Messrs. 
E. Capps, 0. S. Hill, C. Peabody, and Prof. Phillips, resumed the ex- 
ploration with as much judgment as success. 

The conjecture, that the location of the theatre was determined by a 



AMEEICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

preexisting sanctuary of Dionysos in the vicinity, was now to be tested. 
Attracted by some hewn stones, protruding from among the bushes, 
some sixty feet to the southwest of the theatre, Prof. Eichardson dug 
trenches, which, in the course of the first forenoon, revealed the plat- 
form of a building about 12.50 by 23 metres. The disposition of 
these foundations, which lay a couple of feet beneath the surface, 
indicated a temple. No vestige was found of the marble superstructure. 
It must have invited destruction by its exposed position, and must have 
disappeared in the lime-kilns which now yawn near the theatre. Some 
fourteen metres to the east of this platform another large foundation — 
the nature of which had puzzled the excavators of 1891 and had been 
considerably disturbed on the supposition that it was a tomb — was 
now completely cleared. From its form, and position in connection 
with the temple, it was inferred that it supported the great altar of 
the deity there worshipped. As it stands to the rear of the stage 
and directly opposite the vaulted passage which runs under it, it 
would appear that that passage served as an entrance for the proces- 
sion of priests, officials, actors, and chorus who, after the sacrificial 
rites, marched in pomp from the sacred precincts on to the orchestra. 
" Nowhere else in Greece can one see the group of the three structures 
that belonged to the well-organized worship of Dionysos — temple, altar, 
and theatre — so well preserved as here." 

On the other, the western, side of the temple, a stylobate 20 metres 
long and 1.20 wide was found to extend obliquely to the north, in the 
direction of the theatre. Close to this foundation four marble bases 
and some fragments of columns were discovered. It was clear they 
supported choragic monuments ; the whole forming a kind of gallery 
between the sacred precincts and the theatre. The fragments of four 
inscriptions, subsequently unearthed, left no doubt that the monu- 
ments commemorated victories in dramatic and musical contests cele- 
brated in the theatre. No inscription was found confirmatory of the 
conjecture that the site was that of the sanctuary of Dionysos ; but the 
grouping of these monuments with the temple and the theatre forced 
that conclusion upon the explorers. 

The one great sanctuary, however, was, as already stated, the tem- 
ple of Artemis Amarysia — a title under which Artemis was wor- 
shipped also in Attica, where it survives in the name of the village of 
Maroussi. That temple was not only the chief shrine of the Eretrians, 
but, as Livy states, a pilgrimage for the inhabitants of Karystos. Prof. 
Eichardson therefore sought to determine this most important question 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

of Eretrian topography. Strabo says that the village of Amarynthus 
was seven stadia outside the walls ; and he refers to the temple of the 
Amarynthian Artemis. The seven stadia thus vaguely mentioned 
have been supposed by successive archaeologists to lie in every im- 
aginable direction. Some thirty years ago the Greek authorities ac- 
quired an important inscription bearing the text of a treaty between 
Eretria and Histiaea, aod prescribing that it should be set up at 
Amarynthus, — obviously in the great temple which, as was customary 
among the Greeks, was also the public record office. The precise spot 
in Euboea where this inscription was found was never ascertained ; but 
it is believed to have been Bathia. But Bathia is at a much greater dis- 
tance than seven stadia from Eretria. A little beyond the seven stadia, 
however, to the east of the walls, — a direction which Prof. Richardson 
considered likely on other grounds, — an isolated hill known as Kotroni 
rises out of the plain ; and as the geographer Stephanus of Byzantium 
writes "Amarynthus = rfjffog " (an island), Prof. Richardson concluded 
that this definition might refer to the isolated hill, much in the way that 
the " island of Oeroe " is spoken of by Herodotus (ix. 51) as lying in the 
battle-field of Plataia. Moreover, an old church stood on a terrace at 
the foot of Kotroni ; and some inscribed slabs had been found there. 
These considerations urged Prof. Richardson, who had already visited 
the spot in 1891, to explore it now. But two days' work with a con- 
siderable force of workmen revealed no other Hellenic remains than a 
couple of sepulchral inscriptions. The great and renowned temple of 
Artemis, therefore, is still to be sought and found. 

Meanwhile in the city itself progress was made in clearing addi- 
tional portions of the theatre. Between the theatre and the naval 
school of King Otho some walls, which appeared above the surface, 
were excavated, revealing the continuous foundations of houses on 
either side of a street, and, in one case, a fine floor of cement and peb- 
bles. Search trenches were dug on the plateau of the citadel, but with- 
out material result. Finally, diggings were made at the foot of the 
acropolis, one hundred and seventy-five metres to the east of the thea- 
tre, where a protruding block attracted Prof. Richardson's attention. 
A set of four " tubs " or tanks, inlaid with stucco and connected by 
water-conduits, was found here, backed against a wall twenty feet in 
length. The entire aspect of this spot — to which the humorous desig- 
nation of " the city laundry " was provisionally given — and the fact 
that a well-preserved male statue, now in the Central Museum at 
Athens, was unearthed here in 1885, promised well for further search. 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

At this point, after a sojourn of three weeks, which furnished only 
fourteen working-days, the season's operations were brought to a close. 
For so short a campaign, the results attained were not inconsiderable. 
The topographical information alone entitled Prof. Richardson to write : 

" In the case of such an important city, and one whose history interests us so 
deeply, of which no ancient writer has given us any description, this is more of an 
addition to our archaeological information than the discovery of a whole town in 
Macedonia or Cappadocia." 

Still, the excavation of the theatre remained, after the lapse of four 
years, an incomplete undertaking. Like the theatre at Thorikos, it 
stood in unpleasant "contrast to the theatre at Megapolis so faultlessly 
excavated by the British School." And this was the more noticeable, 
since the archaeological importance of the Eretrian theatre attracted the 
yearly visits of Prof. Dorpf eld's touring students. " It must be done 
by the Americans," Mr. Capps wrote, "if they wish to be looked upon 
by archaeologists as thoroughly competent and conscientious excava- 
tors." Prof. Richardson, therefore, commenced, on May 20, 1895, a 
fourth campaign of four weeks, with the result that, finally, under the 
intelligent superintendence of Mr. T. W. Heermance, the theatre was 
freed entirely of its shroud of earth. 

The mysterious " city laundry " engaged the personal attention of 
Prof. Richardson, who, on proceeding to clear the ground, found the 
four "tubs " resting on the cemented floor of a large room. This was 
connected with several other rooms forming, around an open court, a 
large building one hundred and fifty feet square. Its general dispo- 
sition, another row of smaller tanks, — possibly foot-baths, — and the 
liberal system of water-supply within it, suggested that it was a gym- 
nasium. This conjecture was soon placed beyond doubt by the dis- 
covery of a marble base with an inscription commemorating the athletic 
victory of a youth, whose statue had stood on it Two other inscriptions 
of greater importance were soon unearthed. The one, quite perfect and 
consisting of forty-nine lines, was recovered under circumstances which 
indicate the discrimination and care that must govern archaeological re- 
search. A stone, supposed to form a step, was covered, during a heavy 
rainstorm, with a layer of liquid mud, which, drying rapidly under the 
hot sun, revealed a little moulding. This attracted the attention of 
Prof. Richardson, who found the stone to end in a sort of gable. On 
its being raised off the ground, the earth under it had taken the im- 
pression of the inscription so perfectly that it could be read almost as 
easily as from the stone. 



AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK IN GREECE. 

In this inscription Eretria records the honors conferred on Epinikos, 
the son of Nikomachos, a gjmnasiarch, who furnished the funds for 
prizes in contests and was at pains to procure oil of the finest quality 
for anointing the gymnasts. For these and other services it is enacted, 
" to the end that all may know that the state is not ungrateful, and that 
the public may have many emulators of his example," that " Epinikos 
receive a crown of olive and that the decree be cut on a marble stele 
which shall be set up in the gymnasium in the most conspicuous place." 
The "most conspicuous place" was, no doubt, the exact spot where 
the inscription was found. It is also recorded of Epinikos that he pro- 
cured at his own expense a teacher of eloquence and, what we may 
designate in modern parlance, a drill-sergeant. The other inscription 
refers in similar terms to another donor, Mantidoros, who furnished a 
Homeric philologist, Dionysios, the son of Philotas, an Athenian, for 
the instruction of the youth who frequented the gymnasium. 

In addition to these highly interesting inscriptions, which date from 
the middle of the second century B. c, several pieces of sculpture were 
found ; notably a bearded head of Dionysos, of archaic type, resembling 
the one in the Central Museum. Also the upper part of a youthful 
head, belonging to a good period, and, finally, the upper two-thirds of a 
massive head of a man. On seeing the latter fragment the Greek Ephor 
at Eretria declared that it must be the missing part of a bust the lower 
portion of which was in the local museum. As a matter of fact, the 
two fragments fitted perfectly. Eeunited, after centuries of separation, 
they may now be seen at Athens as one of the best and most character- 
istic portrait busts which adorn the Central Museum. Of the minor 
objects found, several coins are noteworthy ; especially one bearing a 
wreathed head of Hercules and, on the reverse, a trireme upon water. 
It dates back probably to the pre-Persian days of Eretria's thalasso- 
cratia — her supremacy at sea. 

The American exploration of Eretria was thus brought to a close — 
creditably, thanks to Prof. Eichardson's labors. But the whole site is 
still teeming with important remains a few feet under the surface. The 
American archaeologists had here the opportunity of achieving, by 
concentrated and systematic work, results analogous to those of the ex- 
ploration of Olympia. But other counsels had already committed the 
School to the excavations at Argos. Argos and the other work ac- 
complished by the American School up to the present time will form 
the subject of my next and concluding article. 

J. Gennadius. 



REPRINTED FROM 

"The Forum" 

FOR NOVEMBER, 1897 



American Archaeologists 
in Greece 

By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1896, by The Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to republish articles is reserved 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

This article and the next — my concluding paper — will deal, as 
fully as their limits permit, with the rest of the archaeological work 
of the American Scholars in Greece : their exploration of the Herae- 
um, which has proved the most fruitful in finds ; their least satisfac- 
tory ventures in Laconia ; their still unreported tentative researches 
at Phlius ; and the most promising of all their undertakings — that on 
the vast site of Corinth. 

Early in 1891, the Greek Government conceded to the American 
School the right to excavate for seven years on any two out of the rive 
sites suggested by Dr. Waldstein, who, accompanied by Mr. Brownson, 
examined, during the month of April, the Argive Heraeum, Argos 
itself, Tegea, Messene, Elis, and Sparta. Dr. Waldstein decided upon 
the first and last of these sites ; remarking very truly that at the 
Heraeum " the excavations of Bursian and Rangabe, many years ago, 
certainly require completion." 

There is, perhaps, no locality in Greece so closely and so continu- 
ously connected with the development and vicissitudes of the Hellenic 
race, from remote antiquity to the present day, as the' Argive territory. 
Within it stand the two renowned centres of the earliest Greek civili- 
zation, Mycenae and Tiryns ; while Argos is admitted to be the most 
ancient city, in Greece, and has figured prominently in the history of 
the country down to the War of Independence. 

Several places in Greece were known by the name Argos, which, 
according to Strabo (viii. 372), signified, in the Macedonian and 
Thessalian idiom, a plain. Homer distinguishes between the Pelas- 
gic Argos in Thessaly, and the Achaean Argos in the Peloponnesus ; 
and he employs the latter designation, or Argos simply, in three accep- 
tations ; viz., (a) as denoting the city over which Diomedes then reigned ; 
(b) as comprising the kingdom of Agamemnon, with Mycenae as its 
capital ; (c) as applied to the whole of the Peloponnesus, in contradis- 
tinction to the rest of Greece beyond the Isthmus. In an even wider 
sense he speaks of all the Greeks as "Argeioi" ("Argivi" in the 
Roman poets) ; and this prevalence of the name is in itself indicative 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

of the paramount importance of Argos in the heroic period. By later 
Greek writers it is applied both to the city and to the entire plain, 
which latter, however, is more distinctly known as Argolis or Argeia. 

The Argive territory is situated in Eastern Peloponnesus, imme- 
diately to the north of the Argolic gulf, where it spreads out toward the 
sea. On all other sides it is shut in by more or less high mountains, 
which thus form the " hollow Argos," as Sophocles describes it (" (Ed. 
Col.," 378). This plain, some twelve miles in length, four to five in width, 
and watered by the Inachus and the Erasmus, was in antiquity fertile 
and famed for its breed of horses ; but its higher levels were very dry : 
whence the " thirsty Argos " of Homer. Phoroneus, son of Inachus, the 
local river-god, appears in the earliest myths as king of Argos. Later, 
however, Danaos is said to have migrated here from Egypt (circ. 1475 
B.C.), landing at a spot known as Pyramia. Four pyramids (the ex- 
tant remains of two of which are described by Leake and Mure), which 
dotted the plain of Argos, seemed to testify at all times to the veracity 
of the tradition ; the more so as similar structures are met with no- 
where else in Greece. But the American discoveries have now placed 
beyond all doubt the early and intimate connection of Argos with 
Egypt. Likewise, the myth of the fifty Danaides, married to the sons 
of JEgyptos and condemned in the lower world eternally to draw 
water from a well in sieves, is but a faithful allegory of the system of 
irrigation introduced by Danaos. Underground galleries, such as have 
now been clearly traced, intercepted the rain-water, which sinks readily 
through the porous and sieve-like soil of Argos. 

Dissensions between the descendants of Danaos led to the founda- 
tion of Tiryns in 1370 B.C., and, a century later, the Pelopidae raised 
Mycenas to great power ; so that Agamemnon's sway extended over 
Sicyon and Corinth when the Greeks chose him as leader in their ex- 
pedition against Troy. After the Dorian conquest of the Peloponne- 
sus, Temenos, the oldest of the Heraclidae, reigned at Argos, which 
now rapidly regained its former influence and power. Argos was 
recognized as the mother-city of a league of Doric states ; and Pheidon, 
the tenth in descent from Temenos, held the undisputed leadership in 
the peninsula, after routing the Lacedaemonians at Hysiae, in 669 B.C. 
But their continued struggles against Sparta exhausted the Argives, 
who were finally defeated by Cleomenes near Tiryns in 510, and gave 
place to Sparta as the leading power in the Peloponnesus. By 463, 
they had recovered sufficiently to subdue Mycenae and Tiryns, which 
they destroyed ; transferring their inhabitants to the outskirts of Argos. 



AMERICAN EXCAVATION'S tM GREEII 

The entire population of the Argive territory at about that time is 
computed at 1 [ 3 : Argos being then, in point of magnitude and 
opulence, the second city in the Peloponnesus after Corinth. Its ancient 
civilization and its reverential cult of the gods aided the development 
of the fine arts ; the city possessed many temples : and the temples 
were full of statues. Aig : a, therefore, at an early date became famous 
for its school of sculpture, especially under Ageladas, the master of 
Phidias. Myron, and his own townsman, Polycleitus, — the three great- 
est statuaries ::' the ancient world Polycleitiis, the rival of Phidias, 
continued active till 423 i ... producing the great chrjselepnantine 
statue of Hera, which was considered superior in technique to the gold- 
and-ivory Athena of Phidias in the Parthenon, and the no ie~ = :--■ 
brated " Doryphoros/ 7 of which a copy exis:s and which, for the per- 
fection and justness of its proportions wa a styled " the Canon." The 
Argive school was, however, chiefly famous for its statues of victors at 
athletic conte ; :5. 

In 146 B.C.. Argos was merged into the Eoman province of Achaia. 
During Byzantine rule, the primacy of the district passed to Kauplia, 
the common harbor of the -Lrgive towns, which remains to this day the 
chief town of that nomarchy. The Byzantines held the place till A.D. 
1247 : and subsequently a u duchy : : Argos' 1 was founded by some of 
the Frank adventm as in wh m the "': osaders had by that time degen- 
erated. In 1388, the widow of Pietro di Federico Cornaro sold the 
lands and forts of the duchy to the Bepublic of Venice for two thou- 
sand ducats of gold and a life annuity ::' srTen hundred ducats. In 
1397, Argos was captured by Sultan Bajazet L who demolished its 
walls : and the place remained for a time deserted. It was subse- 
quently rebuilt by the Venetians, from whom it was retaken by the 
Turks in 1463. It — is again seized by the Venetians, and for a third 
time by the Turks, who held it up to 1521. On December 12 of that 
year the first National Assembly of the revolted Greeks met at Argos, 
on the rows ::' Beats of the ancient theatre, hewn in the rock of the hill 
from the foot of which the modern town extends into the plain. 

Argos is about eight miles distant from Xauplia to the southeast, five 
from Tiryns in the same direction, and seven miles south of Mycenae. 
The conical hill, the steep, rocky si lea of which rise above the towr m 
the ancient Larissa, — a Pelasgic term signifying an acropolis or cita- 
del. Irs summit, nine hundred and fifty feet high, is crowned by the 
remains of the old Cyclopean stronghold, which has given place to a 
mediaeval fortress, famous in recent times for its gallant defend 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

handful of Greeks under Demetrius Ypsilanti, against the Turkish 
army of Dram-Ali. 

On the Larissa stood the sacred shrine of Apollo Pythius, the pa- 
tron of the Argive Amphictyony. But the great divinity of Argos, 
reverenced above all others, was Hera, who had won the land in a con- 
test with Poseidon. She appears in the " Iliad " as the protectress of 
the Argives ; and her worship remained supreme with her people to the 
end. Livy (xxxiv. 24) records the invocation of Aristaenus, the general 
of the Achaean League (195 B.C.) — " Juna regina, cujus in tutela Argi 
sunt" In the city itself she was worshipped in two temples as Hera 
Acraea and Hera Antheia. But her great sanctuary was the Heraeum, 
situated on an elevation to the right of the wayfarer from Argos to 
Mycenae, nearer by two-thirds to the latter city, which, during the 
years of its hegemony in Argolis, presided over the sanctuary. A 
11 sacred way " connected Mycenae with the Heraeum. It was " the 
common custom of the Greeks to place temples of great resort at a 
short distance without the city walls." On the fall of Mycenae, how- 
ever, Argos obtained exclusive control of the sanctuary, and held the 
appointment of the high priestess of the temple, after whose years of 
office the Argives reckoned their calendar. 

Once in four years the great festival of the goddess was celebrated, 
when nearly the whole population of Argos marched in pomp and 
solemnity to the sanctuary ; the chariot of the priestess being drawn 
by a pair of white oxen. It was on an occasion similar to this that, 
the oxen being tardy in arriving from the country, Cleobis and Biton 
yoked themselves to their mother's chariot, and, having drawn Cydippe 
to the temple, a distance of forty-five stadia, laid themselves to rest, 
after assisting at the festival. And the goddess, in response to the 
prayer of her priestess, to reward their filial devotion by the greatest 
boon she could bestow upon men, reposed the youths in eternal sleep. 
The Argives erected statues to the brothers at Delphi ; and Pausanias 
(n. 20) saw a relief at Argos representing the scene as Solon had related 
the story to Croesus, when pressed by him to name a man happier than 
himself (Herodotus, i. 31). For the fame of Hera's sanctuary had 
spread beyond Greece. In Greece itself it was esteemed second only 
to Olympia and Delphi ; and it was here, according to a legend which 
reaches us through a later source (Dictys Orel, i. 16), that the assembled 
Greeks chose Agamemnon as their leader in their expedition against 
Troy, and swore allegiance to him. 

The original temple was destroyed by fire in the ninth year of the 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Peloponnesian war (423 B.C.) through the negligence of the priestess 
Chrysis, who fell asleep after placing a lamp near some dried wreaths. 
The fact that Thucydides (iv. 133) breaks his narrative to refer to this 
event is proof of the importance which the whole Greek world attached 
to the ancient sanctuary. The Argives, therefore, in the ninetieth Olym- 
piad (420-416 B.C.) employed Eupolemos, their great architect, to build 
a new temple, on a scale of greater splendor, a little below the old one, 
whose hallowed precincts were not disturbed. Pausanias, who has left 
us a minute description of the site (ii. 17-18), states that the founda- 
tions " and whatever else the flames had spared " were visible on the 
higher ground ; and before them was the statue of Chrysis. He then 
describes the new temple, above the columns of which, i. e., on the 
metopes and pediments, were represented, on one side, the birth of 
Zeus and the Gigantomachia, and on the other, the war against Troy 
(probably the departure of Agamemnon and his comrades), and the cap- 
ture of Ilium. Before the entrance were the statues of all the priest- 
esses of the temple, and of other heroes, including that of Orestes, the 
son of Agamemnon. The cella contained the colossal chryselephantine 
statue of Hera by Polycleitus ; the goddess being seated on a throne, 
with a pomegranate in one hand, and in the other a sceptre surmounted 
by a cuckoo — her sacred bird. Another statue, in ivory and gold, that 
of Hebe, by Naucydes, the brother of Polycleitus, had disappeared. 
But the temple still contained many other works of art and innumer- 
able treasures : a sacred xoanon — a wooden image of Hera made out 
of wild-pear and brought by the Argives from Tiryns when they de- 
stroyed that place; the shield which Menelaus took from Euphorbus 
at Troy ; the couch of Hera ; a silver altar ; a golden crown and pur- 
ple robe, offered by Nero ; and a peacock — the symbol of the goddess 
— made of gold and set with precious stones, which Hadrian presented 
to the temple. 

Pausanias goes on to define the site of the sanctuary as being on 
the lower declivity of Mount Eubcea, with the Eleutherion flowing on 
the one side, the northwestern, and the Asterion, on the other, the 
southeastern. Asterion, it was fabled, had three daughters, who were 
the nurses of Hera ; viz., Eubcea, from whom the mountain on which the 
Herseum stood took its name ; Acrasa, whose name was given to the hill 
opposite ; and Prosymna, by whose name the region below the sanctu- 
ary was known. A herb also, which grew on the banks of the river, 
was called Asterion ; and worshippers formed chaplets of its leaves and 
offered them to Hera. The distances of the sanctuary from Argos and 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Mycenae are given by both Pausanias and Strabo, and also by Herodo- 
tus, in relating the story of Cydippe. 

It will thus be seen that the precision of Pausanias is such as " al- 
most to guide the antiquary by the hand in his researches." Yet the 
site of the Heraeum, long and anxiously sought for, eluded the persist- 
ent inquiries of travellers in Greece. Leake (" Morea," ii. 387 et seq.) 
relates how, on March 17, 1808, he followed the road from Mycenae to 
Nauplia " for about ten miles in search of the Heraeum," and how, 
" not finding any traces of the temple," he crossed the plain to a spot 
where stood " two small ruined churches, in the wall of one of which 
he observed a part of a Doric column of such a large diameter that he 
had little doubt of its having been brought from the ruins of the He- 
rag um." Leake, like his predecessors, was thus baffled in his search 
after what appeared to be a will-o'-the-wisp. He had at least the sat- 
isfaction of announcing later its discovery by a countryman of his. 
Gen. Th. Gordon, one of the noble band of Philhellenes who, in 1821, 
took part in the Greek struggle for independence, visited the country 
again in 1828 and resided at Argos ; devoting his leisure from military 
duties to archaeological research. He had made repeated, but fruitless, 
endeavors to trace the Heraeum, when, in the autumn of 1831, while on 
a shooting expedition in no way connected with this purpose, his atten- 
tion was attracted by a massive polygonal wall dividing two successive 
levels of Mount Eubcea. He could entertain no doubt that chance had 
revealed to him the secret which had not yielded to systematic search ; 
and he soon verified, as exact, the details given by Pausanias. 

The late George Finlay, who was then at Nauplia, visited the site, 
and sent an account of the discovery to Leake, who published it in his 
" Peloponnesiaca " (pp. 258-264) ; the testimony of Prof. Friedrich 
Thiersch, of Munich, the celebrated Hellenist and Philhellene, being 
also adduced. Finlay explains to Leake why the latter had failed to hit 
upon the spot : "It is a few hundred yards nearer the hills than where 
you passed ; but two ravines [those formed by the two rivers] isolate 
the site and prevent it from being reached by riding close along the slope 
of the hills." It lies three-quarters of a mile to the left of the modem 
post-road leading to Nauplia ; and this road runs along the easier but 
more extended line on the plain ; whereas the ancient festal way from 
Mycenae passed higher up the hills, but was abandoned when, through 
neglect, the torrents broke it up and carried away the bridges. This 
circumstance would also explain the apparent discrepancy in the dis- 
tances given by Pausanias and Strabo respectively. Mr. Finlay pro- 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

ceeds to describe the remains then visible above ground, including 
" the fragment of a Doric column eleven feet six inches in circumfer- 
ence, with twenty flutings ... a quantity of pottery scattered about," 
etc. He also speaks of certain subterraneous passages into which he 
penetrated for some distance. 

When Gordon visited Greece once more, he undertook, at his own 
cost, in the autumn of 1836, an excavation on a limited scale. He was 
again accompanied by Mr. Finlay, whose account of the exploration is 
inserted in the " Peloponnesiaca " along with an excellent plan of the 
site by " J. Eobertson, of the staff of Maj.-Gen. Gordon, of the Greek 
forces in the Peloponnesus." Gordon rightly judged that the new 
temple would be found under the Cyclopean wall ; and there he actually 
unearthed its foundations. He recovered, among other objects, " part 
of a marble peacock, part of a large antefix of terra cotta painted like 
the tail of a peacock, a lion of bronze, six inches long," etc. These and 
other indications enabled Leake to conjecture accurately enough the 
character and style of the temple. Gordon's discovery is also recorded 
at length by Wm. Mure, in his " Journal of a Tour in Greece " (1842, 
ii. 177-182), who adds : "to judge from its success, were it to be fol- 
lowed up on a more extended plan, it could not fail to be productive 
of valuable results." 

This advice was acted upon by Prof. Conrad Bursian and the Greek 
scholar, the late A. Rangabe, sometime Greek Envoy in "Washington. 
Their joint exploration of the Herseum in the autumn of 1854, though 
limited by want of funds, elucidated practically every point that re- 
mained in doubt. JSTot only was the exact position of both temples 
ascertained, but it was established that the later of the two was a Doric 
peripteral temple with six columns at each end; and the recovered 
fragments of sculpture confirmed the belief that the edifice was one of 
the most perfect specimens of the great epoch of Greek art and archi- 
tecture. A stoa, the " cross-cistern," and other structures, now com- 
pletely cleared by the American explorers, were also located, as may 
be seen from the plans appended to Bursian's " Geographie von Griech." 
(ii. 47) and Curtius's "Peloponnesus" (ii. 395, taf. xvi). Bursian pub- 
lished a more detailed account in the " Bulletino " (1854, ii. 13), while 
Rangabe s report appeared in the form of a letter to the German archae- 
ologist, L. Ross (" Ausgrabung beim Tempel der Hera unweit Argos," 
Halle, 1855). To this report is appended a list of the 552 objects re- 
covered during the excavation; including 72 architectural and 350 
sculptured fragments, — heads, torsos, arms, draperies, etc., — 2 inscrip- 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

tions, 17 vases, etc., all of which were deposited in the small museum 
at Argos. 

It will thus be seen that the only task left to be accomplished was 
to remove the superincumbent soil from remains as to the nature and 
value of which there remained no reasonable doubt. Dr. Waldstein 
had made a very judicious choice. Never was an exploration under- 
taken on premises more certain, within lines more accurately denned, 
or on a site more precisely circumscribed. The entire extent of the 
sacred precinct is about 230 metres long by 110 wide. Mount Eubcea, 
itself a sort of foothill of the loftier Mount Tretus,— one of the two ele- 
vations between which Mycenae lies,— slopes gently toward the south, 
and forms an irregular triangle with its base toward the plain of Argos. 
The surface of this high ground is divided into three terraces or plat- 
forms, rising one above the other. The uppermost terrace, on which 
the old temple stood, measures 50 metres from east to west, and is 
nearly as wide. It is retained on the south and partly at the ends by 
the " Cyclopean wall," already noticed, which is built of huge irregular 
blocks of great antiquity. The wall is still in good preservation and, 
as if to mock the failures of those that had sought the spot, forms a 
conspicuous object, clearly visible from the plain opposite and as far as 
Argos and Nauplia. The second terrace, a little larger than the first, 
lies twelve metres lower down, immediately under the wall. On it rose 
the temple built by Eupolemos. The ground then slopes quickly to- 
ward the plain ; but it is precipitous on the east side, where it is retained 
by a wall of Hellenic masonry. Toward the west it inclines to a third 
terrace, which is the most extensive of the three. The entire site is en- 
closed on three sides by the ravines formed by the Asterion and Eleu- 
therion, which are now dried up, except when swollen into torrents by 
heavy rains. These ravines offered additional facilities for the disposal 
of the excavated soil, — always a source of embarrassment to explorers. 

The first campaign began on February 15, 1892, and was continued 
till the first week in April under Dr. Waldstein, who was accompanied 
by Messrs. C. L. Brownson, B. Kewhall, and H. F. De Cou ; Mr. T. 
A. Fox, architect, of Boston, having charge of the surveys, measure- 
ments, and plans. Work was begun simultaneously on the three pla- 
teaus with a large and gradually increasing body of men ; and the ex- 
plorers had not long to wait for substantial results. On the lowest ter- 
race the foundations of a stoa 70 metres long were soon laid bare. 
Though no part of the superstructure was left, its similarity to the stoa 
of Eumenes at Athens was clear, and its masonry apparently contem- 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

poraneous with that of the new temple. At the eastern extremity of 
this terrace the cross-shaped cistern, already noticed, was identified, and 
near it was unearthed what seemed to be a bath. It was here, no doubt, 
that worshippers purified themselves before proceeding to the shrine. 
A little beyond, a shaft, sunk vertically in the rock, having been cleared 
of earth, was found to branch off into several underground galleries, one 
of which was followed for a distance of some thirtj^-four metres. The 
explorers express no definite opinion as to the purpose of these gal- 
leries. The conjecture that one of them was an " aqueduct fed by the 
Eleutherion " is not tenable, since this gallery is carried across the bed 
of that river, a distance of fourteen metres, by means of a walled and 
roofed passage. I venture to suggest that we have here a system of 
conduits made to intercept the water which flows under the porous 
soil of Argos, exactly as it does in the plain of Athens. In a formation 
of schist, the water, which elsewhere is drained into streams, runs 
underground into the sea. Many of those who bathe in the Bay of 
Phalerum have tasted the sweet water bubbling up from the bed of the 
sea. A few years ago a most elaborate system of similar galleries was 
discovered under the slope of Mount Parnes ; and the ancient aqueduct 
in the plain, into which the water thus collected flowed, was traced all 
the way to Athens. When cleared of the accumulated soil, these gal- 
leries began again to yield a liberal supply of water. The waterworks 
of the town of Brighton, in England, are constructed on a like principle. 
I have, therefore, little doubt that the galleries under the Heraeum, if 
cleared to their farthest extremities, would again be filled with water. 
The ancient sanctuary had no other water-supply. 

On the upper plateau, the ruins of the earlier temple were found, 
— presumably much in the condition in which Pausanias saw them. 
They consist of a low wall 14.30 metres long, on some of the upper 
stones of which are visible the circles traced for the columns. A con- 
siderable extent of the terrace is paved with polygonal stones. Masses 
of porous stone, split by the action of fire, and a thick layer of burnt 
wood tell the story of a conflagration. Judging from the absence of 
other vestiges, the walls of the superstructure were, in all probability, 
of wood and clay, like those of the temple of Hera at Olympia. The 
foundation-walls, however, appear to be of an earlier date than the 
Olympian Heraeum ; in which case we have here the earliest temple in 
Hellas. Certain rude engraved stones found on this terrace are of the 
highest interest in respect to the history of the primitive art of Greece. 

On the next terrace, the foundations of the second temple having 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

been laid bare, its stereobate or platform was found to measure 39.60 
by 19.94 metres. Only a few drums and one capital of a column were 
recovered during the first season ; but as the latter supplied the di- 
ameter at the neck of the column, it served as a sufficient guide to the 
other dimensions. The absence of more considerable remains made it 
clear that during the Middle Ages the temple must have suffered com- 
plete devastation. It may have fallen into ruins at an earlier date. But 
undoubtedly it was then plundered systematically ; since nothing re- 
mains, even of the upper courses of the stylobate, and in places parts 
of the foundations themselves have been broken up. Block after block 
must have been hurled into the plain below, to be used as building- 
material at Argos and as far as Nauplia, Unmistakable fragments of 
the temple have been noticed imbedded in buildings along the plain. 

Numerous fragments of sculpture were recovered — evidently parts 
of the subjects adorning the pediments and metopes. The most im- 
portant of these is the now famous female head, unearthed on Febru- 
ary 4, only a foot and a half below ground. A few days later a very 
fine male torso, in perfect preservation, was found inside the temple. 
Another torso, apparently of an Amazon, and two heads, certainly be- 
longing to the metopes, followed. The beautiful female head Dr. Wald- 
stein identified as that of Hera, from the pedimental groups, and un- 
doubtedly the work of Polycleitus. Its ascription to Hera is generally 
accepted ; but as to its workmanship and original position there are 
well-founded doubts. The style of Polycleitus, which is well known 
from extant copies of his works, is not clearly traceable in this graceful 
head, which speaks of a greater affinity with the Athenian types. 
Moreover, the other unquestionable fragments of the pedimental sculp- 
tures are said to be of a different marble from this. 

Between the later temple and the Cyclopean wall, the remains of 
another portico, the " North Stoa," were discovered. It is 55.50 metres 
long and of a good period, though later than the temple. On the 
southern slope, a broad flight of steps was met with ; and the conjecture 
that it led to a kind of propylaeum, forming an approach to the temple, 
was confirmed by subsequent excavations. A large quantity of pot- 
tery, terra-cotta figurines, and some bronze objects were found in differ- 
ent parts of the ruins. 

The most important find of this class of objects was made in the 
slope to the west of the temple. Here, at a depth of from eight to ten 
feet, a thick layer of black earth was met with on the incline of the un- 
derlying rock ; and for three weeks it continued yielding an immense 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

number of terra-cotta heads and figurines of all descriptions and dates ; 
fragments of vases and of archaic pottery ; iron, bronze, stone, amber, 
bone, and ivory objects of all kinds ; mirrors, beads, pins, and seals ; 
figures of animals, and scarabs, — evidently Egyptian imports of very 
early date. All these objects were found massed together in successive 
heaps, mingled with the bones of animals. This latter fact confirmed 
the conclusion — suggested also by the stratification of these heaps — 
that the refuse of old altars, and cast-off offerings, once held sacred, 
were shot here, in order to level up the slope, at some date earlier than 
the building of the new temple. It is, I venture to think, more proba- 
ble, that at least a large portion of this refuse must have come from 
the clearance of the superincumbent mass of rubbish on the upper ter- 
race after the fire. This supposition gains strength from the fact that 
in the same spot were found bisected drums of columns which must 
have belonged to the old temple. They bear peculiarly worked holes 
for the ropes by means of which they were lifted into position — a de- 
vice observed only in the oldest temples of Sicily. This veritable 
treasure trove was completely excavated during the following cam- 
paigns ; yielding no less than eighty " basketfuls " of various objects, — 
all of the greatest value in respect to primitive art and conducive to the 
solution of many questions arising out of the discovery of similar ob- 
jects at Troy, Mycenge, Tiryns, Laconia, and elsewhere. 

These results of the first season sufficiently indicate the nature of 
the entire exploration, which was completed during the springs of 1893, 
1894, and 1895. Gangs of men, numbering at times as many as two 
hundred and fifty, were employed under the direction of Dr. Waldstein, 
who, being frequently absent on other quests, was replaced by Mr. H. S. 
Washington and Mr. J. C. Hoppin. Dr. Waldstein acknowledges the 
" enthusiasm and unselfish devotion " of Mr. Washington, and says : 
" I can hardly realize how the undertaking could have been carried 
out, as it has been done, without his cooperation." Like credit is due 
to Mr. Hoppin, who took charge of the last season's work, and to Mr. 
E. L. Tilton, who acted as architect. Most of the other students of 
the School participated in the last three campaigns, the outcome of 
which may be summarized as follows : 

Immediately above the flight of steps on the southern slope of the 
temple, where it was thought a kind of propjdaeum might exist, the 
remains of another stoa, 45 metres long and 13 wide, were discovered. 
Of its nine Doric pillars portions were found in situ, the capitals lying 
near. The walls are of fine Hellenic masonry ; and the entire building 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

must have formed a most imposing approach to the temple. Among 
its ruins were found a number of the huge drums and other architectu- 
ral and sculptural fragments of the temple, which, it was evident, in 
falling from above, must have crushed through the roof of the stoa ; its 
floor being littered in places with the remains of roof- tiles and metopes. 
Nevertheless it is the best preserved of all the building in the Heraeum. 
A flight of steps leads up to this stoa ; while traces of another great 
staircase were found covering the slope to the west of the temple. 

Between the Cyclopean wall and the North Stoa, the foundations 
of two sets of buildings, of an earlier and a later date, -resting on two 
different levels, were traced. The later one extends to a length of a 
hundred metres, with an average depth of ten metres. The earlier 
buildings are evidently of great antiquity, and, from objects found in 
them, are believed to have served as the dwellings of the priestesses or 
attendants of the original temple. The remains of several other struct- 
ures were unearthed on the two lower terraces, at a depth varying from 
twenty-five to thirty feet below the foundations of the new temple. 
Their use and purpose remain undefined ; but two of them, measuring 
33 by 30 and 31 by 11.40 metres respectively, may have served as a 
gymnasium and a treasury. Close to what has been styled the " West 
Building," parts of a Doric entablature were met with, bearing vivid 
polychrome ornamentations. 

The entire appearance of the Heraeum may now be pretty accurately 
figured, with its "imposing buildings rising from the foot of the hill 
upward, tier upon tier, to the terrace of the old temple on the summit." 
It has also been made clear that the earlier structures and their ap- 
proaches were massed on the west, toward Mycenae ; while the later 
ones faced Argos, to the southeast ; each set thus testifying to the suc- 
cessive supremacy of the two cities. 

Beyond the sacred precincts, to the west of the temple on the banks 
of the Eleutherion, an extensive system of Roman baths was traced and 
cleared ; while within the precincts, but outside the peribolus of the 
old temple, some very early graves, similar to those found at Salamis, 
were discovered. About half a mile west of the temple, other tombs, of 
the earliest Mycenaean beehive shape, were met with. In one of these, 
2.50 metres in diameter and 3.40 in height, no less than forty-nine vases, 
nearly all perfect, and several other archaic objects were found. It was 
fortunately possible to photograph the entire sepulchral arrangement 
before anything was removed, the rays of the sun lighting the interior 
of the tomb through the opening above. 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

The exploration of the Heraeum, though involving no original re- 
search, has undoubtedly yielded results of high scientific importance. 
Without admitting that it is " the model excavation in Greece," — for 
the German exploration of Olympia still holds its preeminence in this 
respect, — it is a source of legitimate pride to the American Scholars 
whose zeal and perseverance brought the work to a satisfactory conclu- 
sion ; and it reflects honor on those whose liberality rendered the un- 
dertaking possible. But the actual scientific value of the exploration 
must depend on the manner in which its results are treated and pub- 
lished. With the exception of Mr. Brownson's report on the first sea- 
son's work, the available accounts of the several campaigns are of 
a provisional kind and somewhat meagre. Exact and exhaustive treat- 
ises require, no doubt, much time and conscientious labor. Yet, for 
this very reason, one turns with appreciation to the able treatment which 
the inscriptions and stamped tiles have already received at the hands 
of Profs. J. E. Wheeler and E. B. Eobinson respectively. 

The inscriptions of the Herseum are the only class of objects which, 
in number and importance, have fallen below reasonable expectations. 
But they include one of very great interest, — a bronze plaque 8 
inches square, with eleven lines written boustrophedon in the earliest 
Argive characters, of which very few examples are extant. The yield 
of sculptures has proved richer than the first season promised. Some 
of the best pieces were discovered during Mr. Hoppin's superintendence 
of the fourth campaign. The fragments recovered are now being 
pieced together, with the help of the Greek restorer, Koulouris, at the 
Central Museum at Athens. And, although one may not be prepared 
to admit that " even those of the Parthenon can hardly rival them," 
what may fairly be said of the Herseum sculptures is, that tfiey will 
add materially to our knowledge of the best epoch of Argive art. 

The harvest of minor objects — including gold and silver ornaments, 
engraved gems and glass scarabs — is simply immense. Curiously 
enough, iron objects are here plentiful and remarkable, among them 
being a strange looking object, 5 feet long and 1 foot in diameter, which 
proved to be a mass of iron spears held together at the ends by iron 
bands, — no doubt an offering after a victory or on the conclusion of a 
peace. These objects now fill a large room of the Central Museum at 
Athens, and require much labor before they can be satisfactorily pieced 
together, classified, and adequately elucidated J. Gennadius. 



REPRINTED FROM 

"The Forum" 

FOR JANUARY, 1898 



American Excavations at Sparta 
and Corinth 

By J. GENNADIUS 



Copyright, 1897, by The Forum Publishing Company 
Permission to republish articles is reserved 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE: SPARTA 
AND CORINTH. 

"What remains to be told of the work of the American archaeologists 
in Greece is of exceptional interest, although the results of the excava- 
tions have not been so prolific as the field of exploration promised. 

During the first season (1892) at the Heraeum, Dr. Waldstein visited 
the battlefield of (Enoe, in the plain of Argolis, and noticed, near the 
village of Koutzopodi, a large mound, which, he surmised, covered an- 
cient ruins. In the following year, on April 20, he dug on this site also, 
confiding the work to the foreman. After the fourth day, however, Mr. 
J. M. Paton took charge of the excavation, which lasted but a few days 
altogether. Foundation- walls, forming an irregular parallelogram about 
62 metres long and from 12 to 20 wide, were traced ; but no elucidation 
of the nature or purpose of the structure was forthcoming, beyond Mr. 
Paton s conjecture that it might be " a building in connection with some 
extensive fountain or waterworks." At the same time, considerable By- 
zantine and other remains were met with. Yet the work was interrupted ; 
Dr. "Waldstein remarking that, " to arrive at more definite results, much 
more extensive operations would have to be begun. Considering the 
work we have before us at the Heraeum, it would not be worth our 
while to do this for the present" It has not been done since. 

Similar attempts made in Laconia were not much more effectual. 
This is the more to be regretted, since few sites present an interest so 
absorbing as that of Sparta. Apart from its transcendent historical im- 
portance, there is every reason to believe that it still conceals valuable 
remains. A contrary opinion is founded on what is clearly an errone- 
ous interpretation of the famous passage in Thucydides (i. 10. 2) in which 
the great historian compares the two rival cities, Athens and Sparta, and 
prophetically speculates as to the future : — 

"If the city of the Lacedaemonians were destroyed, and only its sanctuaries 
and the foundations of its structures were left, I think that among men of a dis- 
tant age there would be much disbelief in its [former] power, notwithstanding its 
glorious records and the fact that it possessed two-fifths of the Peloponnesus and 
that its hegemony extended over the whole peninsula and many allies beyond. 



620 AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

For the city, not having been built in contiguity, nor having been lavish in splen- 
did sanctuaries and structures, but having been inhabited in separate settlements 
according to the ancient custom of the Greeks, would appear inferior to its fame ; 
whereas, if Athens were likewise destroyed, it would be imagined, from the ap- 
parent aspect of the city, that its power had been twice as great as it was actually." 

A careful study of this passage shows, I think, that Thucydides 
speaks not of an absolute, but of a relative, paucity of public monuments 
in Sparta, as compared with her own great power on the one hand, and 
with the incomparable splendor of Athens on the other. To say, there- 
fore, that, " notwithstanding the well-known passage in Thucydides, an- 
cient Sparta possessed many magnificent buildings," is to misconceive 
entirely what Thucydides does say. Moreover, Pausanias has left us a 
very copious list of the public edifices of Sparta, notably the "Persian 
Stoa," — erected out of the Persian spoils, and adorned with many stat- 
ues, — and the temple of the titular goddess of the city, Athena Chal- 
cicecus, built by the famous architect, statuary, and poet, Gritiadas, who 
overlaid its walls with plates of bronze. 

Unfortunately the description of Pausanias, though characterized by 
his usual precision, is in a way vague and embarrassing, owing to the 
fact that actually there exists above ground hardly any vestige that can 
serve as a starting-point in following the route through the city taken 
by Pausanias. Only the theatre and a square building, popularly 
known as the "Tomb of Leonidas" (Leonidaion), remain unobl iterated, 
and therefore the topographical plans of Sparta drawn up by successive 
archaeologists and travellers are only supposititious and mutually con- 
tradictory. The first special and more or less complete treatise on the 
subject, Prof. H. K. Stein's " Topographie des Alten Sparta" (1890), 
was followed, two years later, by a remarkable little work of a coun- 
tryman of mine, Mr. 0. JSTestorides, who, having long resided in the 
district as professor at the local gymnasium, enjoyed exceptional ad- 
vantages in this respect. Finally, in January, 1893, Mr. N. E. Crosby, 
a student of the American School at Athens, having specially visited 
the place for the purpose, published in the "American Journal of 
Archaeology" (viii. 335-373) a very able paper on "The Topography 
of Sparta." 

It will suffice to give here but a few data bearing upon the subject. 
Sparta was built on the right bank of the Eurotas, on a succession of 
low hills rising out of a small valley of rare beauty and great fertility, 
which is shut in by the mountain ranges of Taygetus and Parnon. The 
city was thus easily defensible, and was partially fortified only in 296 B.C. 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 621 

It was not till 195 B.C., under the Tyrant Nabis, that Sparta was sur- 
rounded with walls. Later on, these fortifications were razed by the 
Achaean League ; consequently, the walls of which Pausanias speaks 
must have been of Eoman construction. ISTo vestige of these is visible ; 
but we know, from Polybius, that they were forty-eight stadia (about 
five and one-half miles) in circumference, and of a somewhat circular 
shape. The city was taken in a.d. 396 by Alaric, when he overran the 
Peloponnesus. Under the Byzantines, Sparta was known as Lacedae- 
mon ; and when the peninsula was conquered by the Franks in 1248-49, 
Guillaume II de Yillehardouin established the dukedom of Sparta, and 
built a fortress about two miles to the west, at the foot of Mount Tay- 
getus, on a hill called Mizithra. The inhabitants of the town, which 
was gradually confined to the height near the theatre, now abandoned 
it, and sought protection under the new fortress. Thus was formed a 
new town known by the contracted form of Mistra. After the estab- 
lishment of the kingdom, JSTew Sparta was built (in 1834) partly on the 
ancient site. In its immediate vicinity, considerable vestiges of a 
Roman amphitheatre are to be seen, as well as very important remains 
of Byzantine ecclesiastic architecture. 

But, as the city of Sparta was never destroyed in ancient times, 
it has always been confidently hoped that very material discoveries 
would be made on its site, notwithstanding the probability that dur- 
ing the Middle Ages much of the old material was used up. This 
expectation was confirmed by the somewhat cursory investigations of 
the French "Expedition Scientifique de Moree," in 1820, by Schlie- 
mann's researches, — when he also excavated Yafio, — and by the dis- 
covery, in the spring of 1889, of a polygonal mosaic floor adorned with 
portraits and inscriptions. Moreover, the local museum at Sparta con- 
tains a very considerable collection of antiquities from the site itself 
and the vicinity. Indeed, Dr. Waldstein's first inspection led him to 
write: "From the nature of the soil, as well as from the indications 
of what has already been found there, I am bound to consider Sparta 
one of the most hopeful sites in Greece." Consequently, in January, 
1892, he obtained from the Greek government a concession (the text of 
which will be found in the "American Journal of Archaeology," vii. 
515), by virtue of which the American School undertook to carry on 
excavations in Sparta and Amyclae for seven years. In the spring of 
1892, the School had already on its hands the incomplete exploration 
of Sicyon and Eretria, and had just entered upon the even more re- 
sponsible work of the Heraeum. Nevertheless, in the middle of March, 



622 AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Dr. Waldstein commenced operations also at Sparta. He was allowed 
to excavate, not only on government lands, but to dig trial trenches 
on any private property without compensation,— so ready are the peo- 
ple of Greece to facilitate archaeological research. He first dug on the 
Leonidaion, which he concluded was a small temple in antis. In other 
parts of the site, between thirty and forty trenches were sunk : but 
nothing of consequence was unearthed ; and attempts to fix the locality 
of the agora, the most important centre in the ancient city, were equally 
disappointing. Therefore, it is stated, "the result was to prove that 
ancient Sparta was ruined, not only by Mistra on the hill, but by the 
mediaeval Lacedaemon." A final attempt, however, promised better 
results. Prof. Nestorides had already pointed out a small tumulus, a 
little to the north of the supposed agora, as the probable site of the " cir- 
cular building," which Pausanias says was erected about 576 B.C. on 
the advice of Epimenides of Crete, the famous hieratic poet and sage : 
it was adorned with statues of Zeus and Aphrodite. Here Dr. Wald- 
stein dug. On the summit of the mound, he soon came upon a very 
large base for a statue, near which he discovered the thumb of a colos- 
sal marble statue, apparently holding a sceptre. These data and some 
foundations of an edifice satisfied Dr. Waldstein that this was the " cir- 
cular building " of Epimenides. 

Only a small part of this structure was unearthed, when Dr. Wald- 
stein proceeded thence to Amyclae. This small town, the home of Cas- 
tor and Pollux and of Tyndarus, was one of the most noted centres in 
the Peloponnesus during the heroic age (" Iliad," ii. 584) and maintained 
its independence of Sparta up to a comparatively late time. The hill of 
Hagia Kyriake, about two and a half miles to the south of Sparta, was 
first suggested by Leake as the probable locality of Amyclae ; and the 
desirability of exploring the place and seeking some traces of the fa- 
mous sanctuary of Apollo the Amyclaean was long recognized. Con- 
sequently, the learned Greek archaeologist, Dr. Tsountas, carried out, 
in the autumn of 1891, some excavations the important and decisive re- 
sults of which were known to those interested in such matters, having 
been published in the Greek archaeological " Ephimeris " of January, 
1892. The only account of Dr. Waldstein's subsequent operations that 
has yet been published is, so far as I have been able to ascertain, the 
following : "I conducted excavations also on the site of Amyclae, but 
found that Tsountas had already laid bare all of promise there." 

The exploration of the " circular building " having meanwhile been 
left unfinished, Dr. Waldstein, accompanied by Mr. C. L. Meader, re- 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 623 

turned to Sparta on April 15, 1893, and continued the work till the 
twenty-fifth of that month. Even then the structure was not absolutely 
cleared of earth. Yestiges of a Byzantine church were met with ; and 
almost all the small objects found were Eoman or Byzantine. The 
structural remains laid bare inclined Mr. Meader to believe that there 
was here "an ancient tumulus or grave, or an heroic place of inter- 
ment." But Dr. Waldstein held to his original opinion, which, if sub- 
stantiated, would, no doubt, prove a very material contribution to the 
topography of Sparta. Mr. Crosby, however, who had made a special 
study of the subject, declares : " The identification of this ruin with the 
circular building attributed to Epimenides, I consider a great mistake." 
And again, writing to the " American Journal of Archaeology " (ix. 212), 
he adduces evidence from Mr. Meacler's own report, showing that the 
foundations unearthed were merely the retaining- walls of a mound which 
supported the base of the colossal statue of Demos described by Pau- 
sanias (iii. 11. 9). Mr. Crosby also took exception to the supposition 
that the Leonidaion was a temple in antis. To these exceptions Dr. 
Waldstein replied : " Mr. Crosby's strictures are without any ground. 
There can be no controversy with him on these points." He also states 
that he has good reasons for supposing the Leonidaion to be a temple ; 
and there the matter — as well as the further exploration of Sparta — for 
the present stands. 

About half-way between Argos and Sicyon, in a direct line, lies a 
small valley 890 feet above the level of the sea, ensconced between high 
mountains and watered by the Asopus. It formed the independent ter- 
ritory of Phliasia, the sturdy Dorian settlers of which, considered it 
the omphalos — the centre of the Peloponnesus. The gallant little town 
of Phlius contributed contingents of two hundred men at Thermopylae 
and a thousand at Plataia, and was celebrated as the birthplace of Prat- 
inas, the inventor of the satyrical drama and a competitor with ^Eschylus 
for the prize at Athens. Pausanias (ii. 13) gives an account of the monu- 
ments of Phlius, the exact locality of which is placed by L. Eoss (" Eeisen 
in Pelopon.," p. 25) on the right bank of the Asopus, where considerable 
remains are to be seen not far off, by the church of Our Lady of the Hill- 
side — most probably the site of the ancient temple of Demeter. Before 
Eoss, this interesting valley had been visited and described by Leake in 
1807 ; and it was here that Mr. H. S. Washington, accompanied by his 
brother, Mr. C. M. Washington, undertook at his own cost excavations 
in the early part of March, 1892. The results of this exploration do not 
seem to be important ; but a full report of them has not yet appeared. 



624 AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

The latest exploration undertaken by the American Scholars bids 
fair to eclipse all their previous achievements in Greece. Not only is 
the vast site of ancient Corinth of exceptional interest and of great 
archaeological promise, but the work is fortunately in the hands of Prof. 
Richardson, the present Director of the School, who, as shown more 
than once in these articles, has given proof of sound scholarship and of 
that scrupulousness in research which is an essential in all scientific 
work. 

Little need be said here of the ancient glories of Corinth, whose very 
name conjures up visions of magnificence and memories of artistic refine- 
ment. The spot itself, on which the great city stood, had in it the germs 
of prosperity and opulence ; and commercial supremacy was by nature 
the portion of a community planted astride the isthmus which joins the 
Peloponnesus with continental Greece, between the two great highways 
of ancient commerce, — the iEgean, with all the trade of Asia Minor, 
Pontus, and Egypt, to the east, and the Ionian Sea, with the colonies of 
Magna Graecia, Sicily, and the Pillars of Hercules to the west. Corinth 
was thus the port of transit of the then known world ; for the navigation 
round Cape Malea, to the south of the Peloponnesus, was deemed in an- 
tiquity proverbially perilous. 

In such conditions the city rose rapidly in power and importance ; 
sending forth numerous colonies, and amassing greater riches than any 
other town in Greece. Sumptuous temples and public edifices were 
erected; Corinthian architecture culminating here in the most ornate 
and elaborate of the three Greek orders. The art of the statuary and 
the painter also flourished here with extraordinary luxuriance ; and 
the exquisite Corinthian fictile vases became as famous as the metal 
work which earned for Corinthian bronze {Ms corinthiacus) a world- 
wide fame. Poetry of the softer sort — the Move ddv-rtvoog, of which 
Pindar speaks in his thirteenth Olympian Ode in honor of the great 
Corinthian athlete, Xenophon— was cultivated at Corinth, but not the 
sterner kinds of literature. For the immense wealth centred in the great 
emporium, and the lax morals of traders from the East and the West 
engendered luxury and license. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of 
the city ; and around her magnificent temple on the Acrocorinthus a 
thousand hierodouli, or female slaves, were lodged. 

At the height of its prosperity, Corinth comprised some 70,000 in- 
habitants, besides 30,000 established in the surrounding territory ; being 
then, in size and magnificence, second only to Athens. Though a great 
commercial centre, Corinth, like Athens, stood inland; and Lechaeon, 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 625 

its port, a mile and a half to the north, was joined to it by long walls 
which, extending southward, beyond the city, to the east and west slopes 
of the Acrocorinthus, formed a total circuit of twelve miles, inclusive of 
the suburbs. The most famous of these was Kraneion, where Diogenes 
was visited by Alexander the Great. 

Such was Corinth in greatness and splendor, when Lucius Mum- 
mius, on the pretext that the ambassadors who brought the ultimatum 
of the Eoman Senate to the Achgean League had been insulted, — though 
the city offered no resistance to him, — perpetrated, 146 B.C., one of the 
greatest barbarities of which even a Eoman consul was capable. The 
males of the population were put to the sword ; women and children 
were sold as slaves ; and the beautiful city, after being sacked by the 
soldiery, was burned to the ground. The commercial interest of Eome 
demanded its effacement; and with its last dying flame was extin- 
guished the " lumen totius Graeciae," as Cicero spoke of Corinth. The 
Isthmian sanctuary over which the Corinthians presided was entrusted 
to Sicyon; but the site of the city was not allowed to be inhabited. 
For a whole century it lay desolate, when, in 46 B.C., Julius Caesar re- 
built the city, which was renamed Colonia Julia Coririthus, and colo- 
nized it with his veterans and some freedmen. The old prosperity soon 
returned to its favored abode. Corinth now became the capital city of 
Achaia; and when St. Paul sojourned and labored there, a century later, 
it was one of the chief centres of the new faith. Another century 
elapsed before Pausanias visited Corinth. In describing it he says (ii. 
2. 6) that " of the noteworthy things in the city, some are those which 
still remain of ancient times ; but the greater part were executed in the 
flourishing period afterward." 

Indeed the artistic riches of Corinth must have been well-nigh in- 
exhaustible. Shiploads of statues and other works of art had been 
sent to Eome ; Mummius showing his appreciation of their worth by 
warning the masters of vessels that if any statue were lost or injured 
he would compel them to replace it by a new one. And Polybius, who 
was an eye-witness of the pillage, relates that the Eoman soldiers played 
dice on one of the most famous paintings of Aristides, a contemporary 
of Apelles, for which Attalus, King of Pergamus, subsequently offered 
600,000 sesterces, — equal to $25,000. Caesar's colonists, again, left but 
few graves unransacked (Strabo, viii. 381) in their search for the beauti- 
ful Corinthian vases, which they sold in Eome at fabulous prices. Yet, 
where the harvest was so rich, it is confidently hoped that much still 
awaits the patient gleaner. 
40 



626 AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

The ancient city was built on two successive terraces at the foot of 
the Acrocorinthus, the precipitous and commanding Acropolis, which 
rises abruptly from the plain to a height of 1,886 feet above the sea- 
level. It is now crowned by a mediaeval fort and a vast accumulation 
of remains ; recording its eventful history from remote antiquity to this 
day. It was at all times considered one of the keys of Greece, and, if 
adequately fortified, could rival Gibraltar itself as a stronghold. The 
ancient oracle spoke of it as one of the two horns by which the coveted 
heifer, the Peloponnesus, could be mastered. Indeed, it has never been 
captured, except by treachery or surrender. 

No language can picture the view from the summit of the Acro- 
corinthus, the surpassing grandeur of which was extolled by the an- 
cients themselves. It embraces, as Leake says, " a greater number of 
celebrated objects than any other in Greece." The high mountains 
that shut in Argolis to the south join with the Arcadian range that 
abuts on the plain of Sicyon to the west, and, merged in the view with 
the mountains of iEtolia, Locris, Phocis, and Boeotia toward the north, 
enclose the blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth as of a serene inland 
lake ; Parnassus rearing its snow-clad cap above them all. At the spec- 
tator's feet the Isthmus spreads out like a map ; and beyond extends 
the ^Egean, with its innumerable isles, and the Saronic gulf, with ^Egina 
and Salamis. Farther still, to the northeast, at a distance of more than 
fifty miles, Cape Sunium is seen to merge into the Hymettus and Pen- 
telicus range, encircling the plain of Athens in a ring of purple, with 
the immortal rock of the Acropolis rising up in its centre. Never shall 
I forget how, after journeying by early dawn up the rugged slope of 
the Acrocorinthus, I reached the summit just as the first rays of the 
rising sun fell upon the Parthenon and, lighting up its marble columns, 
made it sparkle like a huge diamond set in massive gold. The Acro- 
corinthus was said to be the domain of Helios, the sun, who won it in a 
contest with Poseidon ; the Isthmus being awarded to the god of the seas. 

Corinth and its fortress fell into the hands of the Turks in 1458 ; 
were taken by the Venetians in 1687 ; and were recovered by the Turks 
in 1715. The stronghold was finally won back by the Greeks in 1823. 
One of the most destructive of the earthquakes which often devastate 
parts of the Morea reduced the modern town to ruins in 1858, when a 
" New Corinth " was built by the sea, three and a half miles to the north- 
east of the old site, which was then abandoned definitely — and one 
may add, fortunately, in the interest of archaeological research. It is 
now mostly under cultivation. A few vestiges of the old walls and the 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 627 

unimportant remains of a Eoman amphitheatre are still noticeable above 
ground ; and, at a short distance, a rock, with several niches and arti- 
ficial channels, from which water springs abundantly, is known as the 
Bath of Aphrodite. But the most conspicuous objects from a distance 
are the seven Doric columns, still supporting portions of the entabla- 
ture, and marking the site of a temple, the identity of which has not 
yet been ascertained. But the style and the proportions of these huge 
monoliths, 23 J feet in height and 5|- feet in diameter at the base, speak 
of the great antiquity of this temple, which must have resisted Eoman 
fury and have served as a sanctuary to the new city. A hundred years 
ago, twelve of its columns were still standing ; and the destruction of 
the temple itself must have taken place at a comparatively recent date. 

These details will give a general idea of the aspect of. the site to 
be explored. The visible remains were scanty ; but as successive layers 
of soil, washed down the slopes of the Acrocorinthus, had overlaid the 
ancient level with a shroud of earth from five to twenty-five feet in 
depth, there could be but little doubt that much still remained to be re- 
vealed to view. The topography however of the ancient city was a 
complete blank ; for, in spite of Pausanias's description, no landmark 
was available as a starting-point. In 1892, the Greek government made 
an attempt to discover the agora ; but the excavations then carried out 
under Dr. Skias failed in this respect, though they brought to light the 
well-preserved floor and stylobate of a dwelling-house of the best Greek 
period. Eesting on this were found the remains of a Byzantine build- 
ing. The inference naturally followed that the substructures of at least 
a large proportion of the buildings of Old Corinth must have been thus 
preserved. 

G-uided by such indications, the Director of the American School 
secured from the Greek government in December, 1895, the privilege 
of exploring this coveted site ; and operations were begun on March 
23, 1896. Eainy weather and the celebration of the Olympian G-ames 
interrupted the work during the first half of April. After that date, 
however, it was vigorously pushed forward with a force of about a 
hundred men up to June 8, under the personal direction of Prof. E. 
B. Eichardson, aided by Messrs. E. P. Andrews, F. C. Babbitt, H. F. 
De Cou, T. W. Heermance, and Gk D. Lord. Some difficulty was caused 
by the growing crops on portions of the land ; and the expropriation of 
private tenures is still the main obstacle to the vigorous prosecution 
of the undertaking. 

In default of any fixed point, save the columns of the temple, Prof. 



628 AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 

Richardson decided to dig trenches in its vicinity and in other promis- 
ing spots, in the hope of alighting npon one of the buildings mentioned 
by Pausanias ; otherwise it was groping in the dark. Altogether twenty- 
one such trenches were sunk, most of them with lateral openings, and 
all about three metres wide and from four to seven deep. The first 
trench, though it supplied no certain indication, revealed thirty-one 
Ionic columns and parts of columns used as foundations for later build- 
ings. In the second trench, thirteen rock-cut graves were found, with 
a considerable quantity of common red ware. The third trench was 
more encouraging in its results, since it laid bare a broad paved way 
of fine workmanship, with water-channels on either side of it — evidently 
one of the streets of the ancient city, leading, as is conjectured from 
traces met with in other trenches, to the agora. The most important 
discovery, however, and the one which decided the value of the explora- 
tion, was made toward the end of the season, when, on May 19, after a 
whole week's fruitless digging in trench Xo. 18, a succession of stones 
appeared arranged step-wise. On the trench being laterally extended, 
these proved to be the remains of the theatre. Five flights of steps, innu- 
merable seat-foundations, and two seats in situ left no doubt as to the 
significance of the discovery. These remains are much shattered and 
damaged : and the steps, in some cases, are deeply worn by footprints. 
The interest of this fortunate find was heightened when it became evi- 
dent that a later Roman theatre had been built on the remains of the old 
structure. A reliable starting-point was thus established : and from its 
position, relatively to the seven Doric columns. Prof. Richardson sup- 
poses the latter to be the Temple of Apollo. Beyond this temple, to 
the east, another trench brought to light a magnificent stoa, or passage, 
which also is believed to lead to the agora — the great centre of the city 
and of its chief edifices. 

The minor finds of this season's work comprise a considerable 
number of sculptured fragments, four heads of statues, and a Diony- 
siac group in marble, about half life-size, representing Dionysus between 
Pan and a nymph. Some inscriptions, mostly Roman, four of them being 
practically entire ; a large quantity of terra-cotta fragments and nine- 
teen whole vases, found in a cluster of prehistoric tombs. — which in 
themselves are of great archaeological interest, — complete the list. 

The exploration, thus far, may be said to have been tentative. 
Nevertheless, it has already furnished indications of verv great prom- 
ise. Prof. Richardson writes : " I have repeatedly said to myself and 
others, in answer to the question, what form of success I would choose 



AMERICAN EXCAVATIONS IN GREECE. 629 

for this year. ' To find the theatre." " Archaeological research is seldom 
regarded in a more ready or satisfactory manner. The guiding end of 
the thread is now held : and it is in trustworthy hands. Xothing is 
wanting but the material means to follow it up : unravelling important 
secrets, revealing long-hidden treasures, and conferring enviable dis- 
tinction on the explorers. The complete, thorough, and systematic ex- 
cavations of Corinth will be an achievement surpassing even that of 
Olympia in point of historic interest, archaeological and artistic impor- 
tance, and in the number and value of the finds that may be reasonably 
expected from it Brilliant as the work of the young American School 
has been thus far. an opportunity for even greater distinction now lies 
before it at Corinth, Prof. B. I. "Wheeler thinks it will be " altogether 
the most important contribution made by any American excavation to 
archaeological and topographical knowledge." 

We have seen, in the course of these articles, what devotion, zeal, 
and enthusiasm have animated the young American Scholars engaged in 
the exploration of sites the most hallowed and most celebrated in the 
world. Many of the students, who had spared no personal labor, were 
led. by the noble spirit which such occupation engenders, to contribute, 
out of their more or less limited resources, toward the prosecution of the 
work. The people of Greece cheerfully give it every facility ; while the 
Greek government is again ready, in the case of Corinth, as Prof. Rich- 
ardson affirms, " to buy for us just as much or just as little land as we 
desire : paying a percentage of the price." But much is needed beyond 
this. To lay bare the entire site — not in a hap-hazard manner, incom- 1 
patible with the requirements of science, and injurious to the repute of 
the workers — several seasons of labor will be necessary, and a large sum 
of money required 

Which American Croesus will earn for himself a fame more enviable 
than that of the Croesus of old, by supplying the necessary funds for a 
work noble in itself and promising him lasting renown ? The erection 
of no institution, the endowment of no foundation at home, can com- 
pare in object and result with this exploration of Corinth by the Ameri- 
can School at Athens. It will be a service rendered to every branch of 
science ; it will be an achievement known to and discussed by the whole 
world : it will be the resuscitation of the " lumen totius Graeciae." The 
name of the Maecenas who confers this benefit on science and civiliza- 
tion will ever remain connected with the imperishable fame of Corinth ; 
while his munificence will add to the honor and prestige of America. 

J. Genxadius. 






H8Z 89 i J 



H82 89 + .1 



7 



8 



10 ~ 
° I P 
~L CM 




9 



00088877809 



687721 



11 



Minim!!' 



- -r 



inRfniiiiIhiniiiIhninli!tiniflTTniiiWiii»i'^» 



